


Reaching for Sunlight

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 03:39:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5401583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sidonie mab Ysandre is a princess in exile. Imriel Shahrizai is an unwilling king in waiting. Seven years ago, both their lives took an unexpected turn for the worse. Now it’s up to Sidonie to save Imriel from his dark heritage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aeriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeriel/gifts).



> _Kushiel's Legacy_ characters do not belong to me and I am making no money off this work of fan fiction.
> 
> Dear Aeriel,   
> I was playing with an idea that I had 200 words of, and then I re-read your dear Yuletide writer letter and seized upon this AU. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.  
> With love,  
> your Yuletide 2015 writer
> 
> * * *

I left home when I was sixteen, bound upon crossing the sea and seducing a man I had never met.

My father put up the most protest about it, saying no daughter of his was to engage in such an undertaking.

“You keep saying _my daughter_ this and _my daughter_ that,” my mother said acerbically. “You do recall that she is _my_ daughter as well?” Simple enough for her to say. She was backed by her heart’s sister, Phèdre. Phèdre was the one who had been teaching me, all these years in exile, what I was to do and how I was to go about it. “Were we still in Terre d’Ange, she’d still be the Dauphine, as close to the throne as the so-called Dauphin is now.”

“Sidonie may be your daughter, Ysandre, but she’s Alban-raised,” my father said. “How well will Naamah’s Temple receive her, if that is where she goes?”

“If she’s ill-received, it won’t be for want of knowledge,” my mother said.

“Sidonie is standing right here,” I put in dryly. “And Sidonie would like to finish packing so that she doesn’t miss the ship.”

Phèdre’s eyes glimmered with amusement. “She has you there, Drustan. We were her age, once.”

“And if you recall, husband mine, the Straits have been crossed for love before,” my mother added.

Phèdre cast her a wry glance. “Sidonie means to capture the Dauphin’s loins, Ysandre, not his heart. Do not confuse the two.” She grinned mischievously. “Although the one may lead to the other.”

“Although if you can help it, Sidonie love, we’d prefer it if you didn’t get into _quite_ so much trouble as we did over it,” Joscelin said, putting his arm about Phèdre’s shoulders.

I had heard more than enough tales about their respective adventures to want to follow in their footsteps quite so thoroughly.

My father sighed. “Joscelin, would you countenance this if Sidonie were your daughter?”

“She’s the next thing to it,” Joscelin said. “Let her go, Drustan. Better it be with your blessing than without it.”

Consent is not a thing that one can coerce out of a D’Angeline, even a half-D’Angeline. My father was Cruithne, and he knew it well, having been married to my mother for quite some time. Yet he turned to me and asked, one last time, “Are you certain that it is your wish to do this, Sidonie?”

I straightened my back and looked him in the eye. “It is, father. I would have a true scion of House Courcel sit on the throne of Terre D’Ange, not this so-called Dauphin and his usurper mother.”

My father tried and failed to conceal his pride. He, too, had overthrown a usurper for possession of his throne. “Very well, then. You have my blessing, Sidonie mab Ysandre. Finish packing. And don’t forget to say goodbye to your sister.”

The blessing of all four of my family elders thus given, I went to my room, only to find Alais sitting in the trunk I had been given to pack, knees drawn up to her chest and cheeks damp, but defiance in her wet eyes.

It looked as though my parents were going to be the easier to placate about my journey.

* * *

Leaving Bryn Gorrydum had been both easier and harder than I had expected. Harder, for it was so terribly hard to leave Alais behind. At fourteen she was blossoming, and it hurt to think that I might be gone for some of her best years. Harder, for while adventure of a kind beckoned, I would deeply miss my home and family. Harder, for trade agreements with Terre d’Ange were necessarily strained and I had to think of the fact that the ship might be searched on arrival. At least crossing the Straits was easier than it had been; Hyacinthe calmed the waters for us, although he also kept a close eye on just how many ships the D’Angelines had at sea at any one time.

Yet easier, because once the ship was out of sight of shore, I could shed Sidonie mab Ysandre, and her earlier incarnation Sidonie de la Courcel, and be simply Sidonie the young woman out to seek her fortune in a new city.

It would be interesting, I thought, to become that Sidonie.

We had decided that it was easiest to pass my dark eyes off as Tsingano, rather than Cruithne, and so Phèdre had taught me what she knew of them, or at least that which she reckoned would be of use to me. That was if anyone even remarked on them; fair hair and dark eyes was an uncommon but not unknown combination.

Still, it was best to have a story prepared.

The rest of my story was not so easily come by, but in the end we had determined that I should claim to be from Eisande. Phèdre had written to Roxanne de Mereliot and, although the Lady of Marsilikos was reluctant to get too closely involved, she had agreed that I could flee to her if in need. Naturally we all hoped there would be no such need, but with House Shahrizai holding tight to the reins of rulership, what we hoped for might not necessarily be what came to pass.

The crossing of the Straits gave me time to consider what my situation would be on arrival in the City of Elua. I spoke the language, of course, along with my native Cruithne, as well as Caerdicci and Hellene. I could perhaps find work as a translator or scribe, though that was not the path that Phèdre’s training intended for me to follow, nor the one that my own desires compelled me toward.

For I did have desires of my own, no matter how much my mother and Phèdre’s hope of having me retake the throne of Terre d’Ange had shaped my path in life virtually from birth.

To live out of the shadow of my royal name.

To forge a life for myself.

To love as _I_ would.

“Prince Imriel,” I whispered, staring out over the bow of the ship, sea-salt spray wetting my lips. “I’m coming for you.”

* * *

The City of Elua was busy, loud, and terrifying.

Bryn Gorrydum was hardly a small place, but the City made it look like a provincial town. Which was perhaps not a terribly charitable thought of me to have, but I was flustered and lost.

I’d had help from the ship’s captain in finding lodgings, securing a room at the back of the home of a woman named Charlotte Bellerose, who worked as a cutter and shaper of gemstones. I’d spent quite some time admiring her work before thinking to go out and purchase food, and the afternoon had already been eaten up by getting my trunk to the house and hanging up such clothing as needed it.

Now it was almost dark, I’d spent over an hour wandering the streets gawking at everything exactly like the villager that I was claiming to be, and I was going to need aid finding my way back. Had I gone straight to the Temple of Naamah and sought aid in finding rest with them, even just for one night, I would have been all right. But no, I had chosen to go my own way, and now I didn’t know what that way was.

I did, at least, have food—bread and cheese that, while simple, would serve me well enough for my first night in the City. A small bunch of grapes rounded it out. I would have liked something more, but until I found a trade or other means of income, I had to be frugal with my spending.

Trying to puzzle out the way back to the gemcutter’s home, while also avoiding looking up at the imposing edifice of the Palace, I completely failed to notice the woman in the crimson robes before I was knocking her to the ground. Both of us landed with cries of surprise, and I felt a wetness spreading between us that indicated my grapes had not survived the fall.

“I’m so sorry!” I said, scrambling up off her and offering my hand.

“Not at all,” she said, giving me a gentle smile. “You look as though you had somewhat on your mind—fancies of young love, mayhap?”

“Nothing so exciting, I’m afraid. It’s my first night in the City, and I seem to have lost my way back to my lodgings.”

Her smile deepened. She had perhaps ten years on me, but they barely showed. Even in the half-light I could take the measure of her beauty. D’Angelines are far from heedless of their looks, and yet she seemed unaware of just how lovely she looked, even with the splotch of grape juice across the front of her robes. Her hair was the beautiful mellow orange of apricots, and I had the urge to touch it to see if it was as soft as it looked.

My father would have been amazed to know how quickly my D’Angeline side had asserted itself upon stepping foot into the City. My mother, however, would not, and Phèdre would laugh to hear of it. I would have to mention it when I wrote to them, although perhaps only to Phèdre...

I realized that the woman had been speaking to me without me hearing a word, and felt my cheeks go pink. “I’m sorry... I was thinking of my parents.”

Her face softened in sympathy and she put a hand on my arm. “It must be hard to be apart from them. Have you come very far?”

“I—Eisande,” I said, catching myself before I could say _I come from Alba_. “It’s been a long journey.” That, at least, was the truth.

She raised an eyebrow at my fumbling response, but said nothing, save for, “Then we must get you back to your lodgings.” She bent and picked up the string bag holding my bread and cheese and what was now a very squashed bunch of grapes. “You have the makings of wine here,” she remarked, and I burst into unexpected laughter.

* * *

Her name was Amarante.

I learned it when she left me at the gemcutter Charlotte’s door, as she kissed my cheek and bade me come and visit her at the Temple of Naamah on the morrow. I gave her my name in return, and though my Alban upbringing rendered the syllables somewhat differently than the D’Angeline tongue, she had no difficulty in pronouncing it. Indeed, it sounded prettier coming from her lips than I had previously heard it, even from my mother.

The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. I ate, wrote letters home, grateful of the small sturdy desk by the bed that did not pitch with the waves, and at last retired to bed after washing the last of the ocean spray out of my hair.

I felt sure that I would sleep poorly, as I had done on the ship, but my head had barely touched the pillow before I fell into dreams.

I dreamed of Amarante, her ready smile and laugh, and how her lips had felt on my cheek.

I dreamed of Prince Imriel, thus far only real to me in the words of others and one painting that Phèdre had obtained two years previously. He had the classic Shahrizai features, or so everyone told me—black hair in tiny tight braids, sapphire-blue eyes, and a look of haughtiness.

Well, and so, I thought in the dream, watching him and his mother riding out from the Palace; the de la Courcels can do haughtiness as well, and considerably better.

Then the dreams dimmed into nothingness, and I slept a long, deep sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

We met the next morning outside the gemcutter’s house. Mindful that I would need to be careful of being recognized now that I was in the city, I had twisted my hair into a bun and covered it with a blue, beaded caul. It hid the blonde locks that I had been told so often resembled my mother’s. I wore a dress in the same blue—a light blue rather than the deeper Courcel color—but with my heritage in mind as I chose it for this, my first full day in my birth city.

“What will you, Sidonie?” Amarante asked, eyes bright with anticipation of the day ahead. “Shall we go to the Palace?” I was shaking my head before she could finish, and she took it for fear of offending the nobility. “The markets, then? We might buy you some more grapes.”

“The markets,” I agreed, checking the coin in my purse.

Amarante was once more wearing her crimson priestess robes, although clearly a different set, for they bore no trace of the grape stain from last night. They drew plenty of attention, as she filled them out beautifully, with sweet curves liable to make anyone look twice.

I had looked twice, and more, by the time we came to the fruit-seller whose wares, Amarante had assured me, were particularly good.

“See, Sidonie?” She lifted a strawberry from its punnet, popping it into her mouth with every evidence of delight, drawing back only the green stem as a little juice ran over her lips and fingers. I did not think she even realized what a picture she made as she sucked her fingers clean. “Try one.”

I demurred, reaching for a dark cherry instead. Its flavor burst delightfully on my tongue. Amarante was watching me now with an expression that mingled amusement and curiosity, as I spat the stone into my palm before slipping the stem back into my mouth.

It was a party trick, not something that Phèdre had taught me with any expectation of my actually doing it for any particular reason. When I brought forth the stem with a knot tied in it, Amarante drew in a deep breath, and her cheeks flushed.

“You will have to teach me that,” she said.

“It would be my pleasure,” I returned.

The fruit-seller was leaning on his cart, watching us. “If you two would come and carry on so every day, I would sell twice as much,” he said with a smile.

Amarante paid for the punnet of strawberries, a bag of the black cherries, a new—and much larger—bunch of grapes, and two ripe apricots. She waved away my attempts to press money on her. “You can come and sit with me and eat these, that’s payment enough,” she said, settling the fruit into a small basket she had brought with her.

Crisp wafers of heavily seeded bread and a small wheel of soft cheese joined the fruit in the basket, and finally Amarante had me carry a skin of wine.

“This is too much for the two of us!” I protested.

“Ah, well. Mayhap we’ll find company,” Amarante said composedly.

She led us to a lovely, well-shaded garden, where quite a number of other people were sitting or lying on the grass. I realized that she had brought us here quite purposefully when I saw that most of them were aged somewhere between myself and Amarante.

The prime age for the Game of Courtship.

Nobody recognized me. I was offended at first, but as people came and went, offering greetings to Amarante and myself, I realized that this could only mean I was succeeding at hiding my true identity. Very good, as to be recognized as the de la Courcel heir would do more than lose me the game; I would be lucky to escape the City without being detained for a very long time at best.

We nibbled on our array of food and sipped our wine, sharing a cup. Amarante pointed out people of note for me, listing names and relationships matter-of-factly. I thought that if Phèdre had known her she would think Amarante terrible at keeping a secret, but in truth it was hard not to see where people’s designs lay.

As a priestess of Naamah, Amarante was not eligible for the Game of Courtship. Neither, in my current guise as a wide-eyed young provincial woman, was I. Yet we drew plenty of attention, and before long we were joined by another pair of young women, closer to my age than Amarante’s. She offered the crisp bread and soft cheese around, and as we ate the two introduced themselves as Lianne and Noémie. I already knew that they were half-siblings from Namarre and that Amarante did not like them overmuch. The first, she had told me in words; the second, in her posture and tone.

“So, Sidonie, are you another one of Amarante’s country lasses?” Noémie asked, adding as an aside to me, “She does seem to collect them every time she leaves the City.”

I could guess what she meant, and that she meant it as a jibe at Amarante’s expense. But Amarante just laughed and put her hand on my shoulder.

“Sidonie found me, actually,” she said. “She literally ran into me last night, and I couldn’t help but take her under my wing. She was quite lost.”

I felt myself going pink in the cheeks, but refrained from reacting beyond a smile, lowering my eyelashes. “Amarante has been most helpful in introducing me to the City and its people,” I said. “She knows a good deal about both.”

Lianne’s lips tightened a little, and I knew that she sensed an undercurrent to my words. She said nothing other than, “Then I am glad you have found a good guide. It must be hard being away from home.”

 _Home_. I thought of my parents, of Alais sitting teary-eyed in my trunk, refusing to get out until I promised her I would come back, and it was not hard to summon a few tears of my own. “It is, but I did so want to see the City, and now I know there are good people here, I am glad I came.”

Lianne’s face relaxed and she smiled. “Come now, Sidonie, don’t weep; Eisande is not so far away, and you can always write to your family.”

“I wrote my first letter home last night to let them know I had arrived safely.”

The conversation flowed then from letter-writing to other forms of writing, poetry chief among them. Noémie in particular was looking forward to the Royal Poet (and I mentally noted the change from “Queen’s Poet” to tell my mother; she missed Thelesis de Mornay a good deal, as did I) giving a public performance five days hence.

“She’s so unwell, poor thing,” Lianne said with sympathy. “We’re lucky to hear her speak.”

“She never truly recovered from the Bitterest Winter,” Amarante said. “It afflicted a lot of people for a good long while, and for some it has never ended.” She gave me an odd look as she spoke. That winter had indeed had a lasting effect on so many people. I had Phèdre’s tales to attest to that, and that had not even been the hardest part of her startlingly full life.

No, that had been seven years ago, when she had returned to Terre d’Ange from Drujan with _Prince_ Imriel at her side, only to find the land in an uproar, Queen Ysandre preparing to flee to Alba with myself and Alais, and House Shahrizai ascendant. Phèdre had been gone so long that Melisande had assumed she was dead along with Imriel. She had set her other plans into motion, to take the crown of Terre d’Ange for herself instead of for her son. She would have had the support of her husband Benedicte, had he not fallen ill and died; that may even have been the final straw that drove her into the single-minded madness needed to keep her plans rolling forward.

Phèdre and Joscelin had tried to plead their case with her.

Melisande, not mollified by the return of her son, given his newfound attachment to Phèdre, had sent them forth from the Palace, promising Phèdre only death if she tried in any way to return.

Melisande had kept Imriel with her.

My mother had struggled long and hard with her decision to leave Terre d’Ange, but in the end having two young girls had overridden all else. Joscelin had of course wanted to take vengeance on Melisande. Phèdre had been the one to placate him, to talk my mother into taking ship with us, and even to keep Alais and I from crying in fear as the ship drew away from the shore. It was many years before I realized just what it had cost her to do so. She had, after all, lost the boy who was like a son to her.

Something of what I was thinking must have shown through on my face, because Amarante touched my arm. “Are you well, Sidonie? You look pale.”

“Quite well, thank you.” I mustered a smile and reached for the grapes. “I should like to see the Royal Poet perform. Will it be at the Palace?”

“But of course,” Noémie said. “We’ll arrange for you to come with us.” She clapped her hands, eyes sparkling. “It will be such fun!”

Mayhap it would be fun for her; for my part, I still did not really want to go to the Palace. Though Phèdre and my mother had both taught me to keep my emotions well in check, would I be able to do so when faced with my childhood home and with my mother’s deposer?

* * *

I was still ruminating on the past an hour later, after we had finished our meal and bid Lianne and Noémie farewell for the time being. Several young men had come to speak with us as well, doing an utterly terrible job of hiding their interest, particularly in Amarante.

“Your mind wanders a good deal, Sidonie,” Amarante observed. We were walking arm in arm through the City, bound for the Temple of Naamah. “I shall have to buy a bell to ring to get your attention.”

I smiled at her. “Because I’m a country lass under your wing?”

Amarante clicked her tongue against her teeth and rolled her eyes skyward. “Noémie is prone to jealousy. Not that she doesn’t attract enough attention of her own, but it isn’t from the people she favors.”

“How dreadful for her,” I said in a caustic tone that could have been my mother’s. “All these pretty D’Angelines to choose from, and the ones who desire her are the wrong ones.”

Amarante nodded, a curious expression on her face. “Truly dreadful,” she said, and now she was the one who sounded absent.

The Temple of Naamah was an impressive building. The last time I had seen it I had been considerably younger, and yet it still stood over me as imposing as ever. Yet it wasn’t the size that made it striking, rather the aura of grace and love that permeated every part of it.

Looking at it, I felt my D’Angeline side tugging at me harder than ever. I may have spent my earliest years in the City of Elua, but my formative years had been spent in Alba, and they were two very different places. Not that I at all begrudged the time spent in Alba—save for the fact that it had been in exile from my homeland, thanks to Melisande—but it was so very good to be back home.

I squeezed Amarante’s arm, and she smiled at me. “Will you bring Naamah an offering?” she inquired. “Not that you yourself aren’t a lovely offering.”

I had been somewhat admiring her in a more than aesthetic way; it had not occurred to me that she might be doing the same. I kept myself from blushing by sheer force of will. “I would very much like to,” I said, and had to remind myself to let her lead the way to where there were doves for sale, rather than assume the knowledge for myself. It was hard, when I could get physically lost, but mentally I knew so much of the City so well, from my own childhood and my family’s stories.

There were many of the doves for sale. I chose one that was almost entirely white save for a blush of pink along the undersides of her wings, and the deeper coral of her feet. She flapped irritably as the seller transferred her into the small cage for me to carry to the temple, and Amarante laughed.

“She knows her own mind, that one,” she remarked.

“I should hope so. I would have her go her own way,” I said.

We entered the temple side by side, and a male acolyte dressed in red greeted us each with a kiss, lingering rather longer over Amarante’s than mine.

“Bérengère’s daughter,” he said with pleasure. “It is always so good to see you!”

My breath caught in my throat. Amarante had not mentioned that she was Bérengère’s daughter. I knew well enough that Bérengère was the head priestess of Naamah. She had been an acolyte when Phèdre was first dedicated, and Phèdre had spoken highly of her. While I knew that she had a daughter whose name was Amarante, I had not made the connection. Phèdre would be quite ashamed of me.

“I bring a new friend to make an offering, Olivier. This is Sidonie of Eisande,” Amarante said.

Olivier’s gaze shifted to me. “Oh? Do you intend to dedicate yourself to Naamah?”

“I…” I hesitated. I had not thought of so doing, but now that the thought was there… “No. Not yet. But I would like her to know that I am here in the City.”

“Have you come far from home?” Olivier asked.

“Quite far,” I said, feeling Amarante stiffen at my side. I was becoming certain that she knew my true identity, and yet I could not bring myself to fear that she might reveal it.

“If you don’t mind, Olivier, I’ll perform the blessing,” Amarante said.

Olivier bowed. “By all means, daughter of Bérengère.”

Amarante led me to the altar. “It is a simple thing,” she said, “especially as I would warrant that Naamah already knows of your presence here.”

She took the dove’s cage from me for the moment and set it on one end of the altar before plucking a small honey-cake from a bowl of them and breaking it apart. I opened my mouth and she placed a portion on my tongue; it was melting-sweet, so soft I did not have to chew. “May your hunger for love never go unfulfilled.” She took up a chalice and held it to my lips; sipping, I tasted wine as sweet as the honey. “May your thirst for desire never go unslaked.” Her apple-green eyes met mine and I saw desire dancing there, along with the deeper joy that came of performing her sacred role.

“Amarante…” I whispered.

Amarante held out the dove’s cage to me and I unlatched the door, slipping my hands inside to catch the dove. She fluttered her wings as I withdrew her.

“Blessed Naamah, watch over me in the City,” I said, my hands rising, the dove flying from them almost before I released her, the tinge of pink on the underside of her wings flashing as she rose toward the bright patch of blue sky above us. Amarante and I watched as she flew free.

“Well done,” Amarante said softly.

I turned to face her, and her mouth met mine. Her lips were soft and warm; her tongue slipped between my lips and I met it with my own. Her fingers tangled in my hair where it was escaping its bun; I found myself with my palms cupping her cheeks, and traced the shell of her ear with one fingertip.

We parted only at a whistle of admiration from Olivier.

“She must mean a good deal to you, Amarante,” he said.

“Oh, she does,” Amarante said, taking my hand. “More than I can explain.”

Olivier raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Being privy to and intentionally ignorant of other people’s business was part and parcel of being a Servant of Naamah. It was, I was finding, also a part of being a friend of Amarante. Still, I thought, she would surely tell me her thoughts soon enough.

“Come, Sidonie, let’s away. If you’re to attend the Royal Poet’s performance, we must get you out of those wretched country rags,” Amarante said lightly.

I opened my mouth, ready to announce that I was wearing fine blue slubbed silk and if it had not traveled overly well from Alba that was hardly my fault, but Olivier’s laugh cut my words mercifully short. “Yes, do go,” he said. “Though I’ve no doubt that Naamah would smile on your... _offering_ , other people use this temple.” He kissed us both, although far from as passionately as Amarante.

Then we were outside. I looked at Amarante, who was looking at me.

“What will you, Sidonie?” she asked, her voice low. “Shall I leave you to your afternoon? Or would you like to see where I live?”

I accorded her a kind of half-curtsy. “I would like to see where you live,” I said, not quite managing to sound as collected about it as I had hoped. Amarante’s lips quirked into a smile at my discomfiture. It was quite an experience to find myself at such a loss for words.

* * *

Amarante dwelled not far from the temple, which did not surprise me. Her home was small, with one room that served as kitchen and dining and entertaining area all as one, and the second room being her private boudoir. I felt ashamed looking around—her whole home was the size of the playroom that Alais and I had had as children.

“I do keep my own room at the temple to do Naamah’s work, but there are those people who I particularly trust who get to see my own abode,” Amarante said, forthright as she closed and latched the door behind us, gesturing for me to sit at the small table.

“And you particularly trust me after less than a day?” I asked, sitting down. I was half afraid, half curious, and wholly trying to hide both behind a carefully maintained expression.

Amarante sat down across from me. “You have the de la Courcel neck, your highness. Also the de la Courcel eyebrows. You needn’t raise them at me like that. I know who you are.”

I let out a breath I had not realized I was holding. “You do.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose now you’ll summon the guards and have me sent to the Palace to face judgement for breaking exile.” I pulled free the caul and shook my hair partway free. At the very least I could savor the relief of not having so many pins in it while I awaited my fate.

Amarante unexpectedly burst out laughing, a lovely, bubbling sound. “Oh my dear, no!” She sobered and reached out to take my hands. “Sidonie, you couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m glad you’re here. I’m gladder that I found you first and not someone else. Had you run into the wrong person last night, then yes, you might now be cooling your heels at the Palace, waiting on Melisande’s pleasure. But I knew you from the minute that I saw you.”

“Yet you chose to flaunt me at the gardens earlier today.”

“I wanted to see if anyone else recognized you. I truly doubted that they would, although you do take after your mother so very much.”

Anger rose in me, and my hands clenched around hers. “You knew that and still chose to go out on a pleasure-stroll?”

“If I had thought you were at any real risk, I would have brought you back here and locked you in the bedroom until I could consult with certain contacts of mine and determined what to do with you.” Amarante calmly pulled her hands free of mine. “But now we know that you will generally go unrecognized, and we merely need to devise a way to ensure that Melisande herself does not come to know of your presence in the city.”

I was not Phèdre nó Delaunay, trained to this from childhood, with a wealth of experience in conspiracies and plots. But there was much that Phèdre _had_ taught me, and the first thing was to keep plans as simple as possible.

“You said that I take after my mother,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Then the first thing I should do is change the color of my hair.” I lifted a lock of it and let it fall. “If by some chance I do cross paths with Melisande, that will be one of the first things she would notice, unless she’s particularly looking at my eyebrows.”

Amarante’s face fell. “I suppose we should, at that.”

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s just that your hair truly is very lovely. Like burnished gold. I had been wondering what it would be like to touch since I first saw you, and you’ve had it tied back since.” Her voice dropped. “Now I know, but if it’s auburn or brown or black, will it still be the same?”

A feeling of recklessness came over me. A sense of adventure. The de la Courcel haughtiness was swept away as I stood, pulling the last of the pins free that kept my hair in place, letting it tumble around my shoulders.

“In case it isn’t, you’d best get your fill now,” I said, and Amarante smiled brilliantly at me before taking me into her embrace.

* * *

We were partway through undressing, both disheveled, Amarante’s lips pinker than ever from kissing, when she thought to say, “Just how much did Phèdre nó Delaunay teach you in the ways of love?”

I was going to have to find a way to keep that damnable blush from rising to my cheeks. “Um,” I said eloquently. “Largely theoretical matters and studying the classic texts.”

“‘Largely’?”

“She gave me a hand-mirror and some particularly detailed sketches,” I admitted. “She taught me what she could, but Alba doesn’t have the Night Court, or Showings, or really any adolescent love-games. My father would have had my head if I’d done anything with one of the local boys.”

“What _did_ you learn over there, then?”

“Embroidery. Covertcy. Languages. Joscelin taught me seven ways to disarm a man just in case I ever got kidnapped.”

Amarante laughed, then grew solemn. “In that case, we’re going about this all wrong,” she said, lifting my dress, which had slipped to my waist, back to my shoulders. “Your first time shouldn’t be a tumble in a courtesan’s bed.”

“Why not? It so often is for boys—men,” I said.

“You’re a woman and a princess,” Amarante said. “Moreover, I have far more experience at this than you do. You’ll do what I say.”

I couldn’t keep back a soft moan of deprivation as she pulled her robes back up around her shoulders. I was deeply aware of the aching sweetness between my thighs, a sweetness that begged for release. “Can’t we tumble first and _then_ follow the books?”

Amarante gave me a sweetly devious smile. “My way first, your highness. I swear to you, you’ll enjoy it.”

She began with soft kisses, lighter than the ones we had been exchanging, yet still making my knees weak. She ran her hands through my hair over and over, letting it fall as it would about my shoulders. Her fingers whispered over the silk of my dress, making it seem as if I was wearing nothing at all, though the fabric was not sheer. Her kisses touched my cheeks, my lips, my throat. I was certain she could feel my pulse beating under her lips. I moved to reciprocate and she stayed me with one hand, slipping my dress off one shoulder with the other and kissing the bared skin.

“Amarante…” I said.

“Hush, your highness. Let me do this.” Her eyes were fairly dancing. “‘Tis a rare thing to deflower a member of the royal family, and I would do it to the best of my ability.”

“And that means not letting me touch you?”

“Well.” She smiled. “Not just yet.”

Her hands and lips moved on me again, with kisses dotted along my neck and clavicle. She still held my dress against my skin with one hand, which I thought a little belated, considering we’d been bare to the waist not so long ago.

She teased me through the cloth, her hand cupping my breast, thumb rubbing over my taut nipple. I made a soft sound of pleasure and saw her smile before she let the cloth fall and bowed her head to my breast, her lips closing over the same nipple and sucking. This time my moan was appreciably louder, and I felt rather than saw her smile.

Amarante knew how to walk the line between teasing and outright frustration, and she walked it exceedingly well. My parents had taught me to be diplomatic, to hide my feelings, and to be cool and collected in the face of anger, violence, and hatred. They had not taught me how to deal with this particular kind of passion.

By the time that Amarante had worked my dress back down to my waist, I was almost out of my mind with wanting.

“So much for unslaked desire!” I gasped.

Amarante, picking loose one last knot in the lacings of my dress, laughed. “When I’m finished with you, you’ll be thoroughly sated,” she promised.

My dress fell to a heap on the floor. We were quite unevenly matched, now, me in nothing but smallclothes, Amarante fully clad in her priestess’s robes. D’Angelines are not shy of their bodies, unless it feeds a particular desire to be modest, but I was only partly raised D’Angeline, and I folded my arms across my breasts.

“Now you’re just being silly,” Amarante scolded me affectionately. She loosened her robes and let them fall from her shoulders, baring her white skin. “Come and learn me, and mayhap you’ll feel less afraid.”

I felt my spine stiffen. “I am _not_ afraid!”

“Then come to me.”

I closed the gap between us swiftly, and I daresay she was expecting another deep kiss, but instead I lifted a lock of my hair and brushed it against her cheek. She sighed at the touch. “So soft.” I did it again and then trailed my hair down the side of her bare white throat, leaning in to kiss her at the same time. Her lips parted under mine, and I licked delicately into her mouth. Though the heat between my thighs had not lessened, I was beginning to learn the virtue of patience.

I worked Amarante’s robes further off her shoulders and slid one hand under her breast to cup it. She wore a short, red, lace-edged chemise under the robes of a fine fabric and I rubbed it over her skin, admiring how it clung to her curves. She gasped and clung to me; I held her for a moment and then gently pushed her away so that I could continue exploring her body.

It was incredible, I thought, how much difference there could be between two women’s bodies. I was not lacking in curves, but Amarante’s put me to shame. She had those stunning apple-green eyes, while I had my Cruithne half-breed eyes. The words that had been used to shame me as a child had wounded me less as I became an adult in Alba, where such eyes were not uncommon, but now I thought it all the better that we intended to color my hair. With darker hair my eyes would stand out less. I was still paler than a pure-blood Cruithne woman, but I would pass well enough.

I had Amarante raise her arms so that I could work the chemise off over her head. Her breasts were pale cream, tipped with rosy peaks. I was drawn to pull one peak into my mouth, rolling my tongue over it, and Amarante’s hand found a place in my hair, her fingers stroking through it encouragingly. I felt her nipple harden under my tongue and went from licking to sucking, and Amarante’s fingers clenched for a moment in my hair.

“I’m not sure I believe what you say about being inexperienced,” she said breathlessly.

“Inexperience and complete ignorance are two very different things, my priestess,” I said, lifting my head for just that moment before diving back in to repeat the treatment on her other breast.

Before long we were both down to just our smallest of smallclothes. Amarante wore red to match her chemise, and hooked one finger under the waistband, lowering it enough to show the line of her hipbone. I went to my knees in front of her to run my tongue along it, and she shivered.

“You’re learning,” she murmured.

I stripped the flimsy fabric down her legs, and she lifted one foot then the other to allow me to strip it off her. I moved in closer but she stayed me once again with her hand on my shoulder.

“You first.”

Once I was at last stripped bare in front of her I felt another rush of that unaccountable shyness. But Amarante took my hand and led me to her bed, and I followed willingly.

It was a bed made for comfort, rather than particularly for show or for pleasure—although, I found quite soon, without negating either of the latter. Amarante steered me to settle back among soft pillows, and her body covered mine as she kissed me until I was quite dizzy. One of her thighs settled between mine, and I arched upward, striving to press against her. Every time I did so, she pulled back, until I reached up to grasp at the smooth curve of her buttocks and drag her down against me.

“So impatient!”

“Do you call it unwarranted?” I asked.

She smiled down at me, her lovely hair tumbling about her shoulders, its ends brushing my face. “No. Call it rather _flattering_ , to be honest with you. I’m not yet past my prime—” there was that D’Angeline awareness of her appearance “—but there are those who still prefer a younger partner. Or partners.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” I knew it for at least a white lie, since I did have plans to eventually go elsewhere, but they were becoming less and less important as we moved together.

She flashed me a wicked smile. “Really? Because I am.”

I was about to ask where, when she moved down the bed, teeth nipping lightly at the hollow of my throat, tongue trailing between my breasts then down further to dip into my navel, until I could feel her warm breath close to my heated center. But her tongue stopped there. Indeed, she pillowed her head on my thigh and began tracing idle patterns on my other thigh with her fingertips.

“Amarante...”

“Patience. If you hasten through all of Naamah’s pleasures, you’ll overflow with them, and not learn the joy of taking things one step at a time.” Her words were soft breaths against the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, but I took them all to heart.

With each stroke her fingers pressed inward a little more, until she was drawing lines right along the outer folds of my labia. I had seen detailed sketches of the area that she was exploring, had looked at myself with a small mirror, and had of course touched myself there, but to have someone else do it was a very different experience.

“You are so very ripe, your highness,” she murmured, her breath ghosting over me. I had a second to wonder exactly what she meant before she slid one finger along my inner lips and I realized she meant that I was very, very wet there. I let out a low keening sound and Amarante kissed my thigh before continuing her ministrations. Her lips so close to my center were maddening. Her fingers spread me open and the very tip of her tongue darted out to taste me. This time the noise I made could not in any way be described as “low”.

Amarante worked me with lips and tongue and fingers, until I scarcely knew exactly how she was touching me, only that she kept lifting me up tantalizingly close to a peak and then dropping back down, until I was writhing with need. Gasping her name. Pleading with her.

When at last she granted me release, I soared like a dove.

Then she did it all again, and again, until I had to beg her to stop before I collapsed, stars the color of her eyes bursting in my vision.

After that, she taught me to return the favor. It was educational indeed to see such things from the outside, to watch as she gasped and squirmed while I learned all the curves of her body and the taste of her mouth and skin and core.

No—learning was what I had done out of books. Theories studied alongside mathematics and linguistics. This was something deeper, something sacred, the passing on of wisdom, of the mysteries of sensuality and rawer sexuality. This coming together in Amarante’s bed came closer to the touch of the divine than our visit to the Temple of Naamah had, and not solely for the sheer physical pleasure that we had shared. The ceremony at the temple had been the formalities; this was the true rite, the true worship.

When we lay together afterward, wrapped up in one another, her breath warm on my cheek, her breasts pressed against my back, I felt as though I were in the tender embrace of Naamah Herself.

* * *

 

Amarante took her leave of me some time later, as she said apologetically that she had duties at the temple. I thought of her with other lovers and was surprised that it did not rouse jealousy in me. I had thought that perhaps it would. Alba is not quite so permissive as Terre d’Ange when it comes to matters of physical love. In this case I was my mother’s daughter—or, perhaps, Phèdre’s.

She kissed me goodbye, said, “I trust you can find your way back home?” and then closed the door as she left so that I had privacy to rearrange my disheveled clothing and hair. She had a mirror behind the door, and I looked long at my reflection. I didn’t seem to look any different than I had that morning, and yet so much had changed.

Well, and so. More was yet to change.

I dressed myself, straightening my clothes as best I could, and pulled my hair up into a bun, securing it with some hairpins and my discarded blue caul. Amarante had made plain once more her unhappiness at my intention to color my hair, but understood the need to do so. I sensed that we were going to have to discuss my intentions further, but for now my time was my own, and after completing my swift coiffure, I left Amarante’s home.

It was quite simple to find an incense-maker, even with the clash of scents that came from every direction in the City. I requested a mixture of sage, black walnut, and rosemary. It would have created a strong perfume, had I intended to use it as an offering. But the combination had other uses, and I did not have Phèdre’s access to Tsingano dyes. I was reasonably certain that I would be able to manage on my own.

After visiting the incense-maker, I made my way to the weavers’ quarter, where I was able to obtain needles and thread, a delicate square of cambric, and—as though it was an afterthought—a small bottle of blue woad dye. I had a story ready about embroidering the cloth to make a handkerchief for a cousin, but did not need it; the woman who sold me what I wanted was clearly eager to get back to work. The steady clacking of looms was soothing, reminding me of home.

My last purchase was a jar of healing balm, generally used for cuts and scrapes. That wasn’t my intended purpose, but as with the others, the person I bought it from had no questions. I was, I realized, perhaps a little too wary of people uncovering my true purpose in the City.

My room at Charlotte’s house was small but comfortable. A long way from the Palace, or Bryn Gorrydum, or even Amarante’s home, but it was a place I could call my own.

I had yet to arrange a discreet courier to get my letters back to a ship that was Alba-bound. I moved them off the desk and sat down. The incense-maker had ground the walnut mixture exceedingly fine, and all I had to do was mix it with water and apply the paste to my hair.

It took a long time. I had long hair, and nobody to make certain that the back of it was being equally covered by my makeshift dye. Then I had to sit still with it on for some time to let it set in. That was all right, though, because it gave me time to contemplate my next task.

The Cruithne have a wide variety of facial tattoos. Warriors’ marks, clan marks, spirit animal marks. Alais was eligible for the marks denoting a true dreamer, although our mother had forbidden her from doing so. She had not said aloud that it was in case we ever returned to Terre d’Ange and the people took against a so-clearly Cruithne heir, but we knew. Our cousin Dorelei bore them, as did her mother Breidaia, but they weren’t anywhere near the D’Angeline line of succession.

And then there was the marking that we both, as the Cruarch’s daughters, could bear.

It was a simple enough design; a classic triquetra, appearing as though three leaves overlapped, with a circle binding them together. Had I the skill of an expert marquist, I would have rendered them as lily leaves for Blessed Elua. As I was not, they would be minimalist sketches. Perhaps that was for the best. I could not go to a D’Angeline marquist anywhere in or out of the City, for a Cruithne tattoo would be remarked upon, and word would fly to Melisande’s ears.

I was going to have to do it myself.

My mother had forbidden Alais to wear the true dreamer’s marks. Had she known what I intended here, shoe would have forbidden this as well. But I was Drustan mab Necthana’s daughter as much as I was Ysandre de la Courcel’s, and I could choose how to honor my family.

I raised the needle, peering into the mirror. I retrieved the piece of cambric I had purchased, folded it, and pushed a corner of it between my teeth to muffle any sound I might make.

Then I began the very long, very slow process of committing my woad-mark to my skin.


	3. Chapter 3

“Ah, Elua!” Amarante held me at arm’s length, looking at my face and hair. “It’s worked so well, Sidonie, but are you _sure_ this is how you want to go about the City?”

“Melisande’s been drumming that half-breed, half-blood nonsense into people’s heads for years,” I said firmly. “The last place she’ll expect to see me is guised as a Cruithne woman.”

“Especially with that mark on your face.” Amarante touched it with a fingertip and I flinched; it was yet sore, despite a good slathering with healing balm. The balm at least cooled down the redness that came of pricking one’s skin deeply and repeatedly with a needle. “Oh, Sidonie…”

“We still have four days until the recital. It has time to heal.”

“Your mother will be furious, you know.”

“I don’t know. She did braver things for the sake of the throne than enduring a few pin-pricks.”

Amarante raised an eyebrow. “Such as sending her daughter to tempt away the current heir to said throne?”

“She didn’t send me. I chose to come.” I sat down on the edge of my small bed. “I imagine people will accuse Phèdre of putting her up to it, but truly, I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t want to.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Amarante sat beside me; the bed creaked a little.

“Before I do anything about it, though, I need to know some things.”

“I’ll do my best to answer, if I can.”

I had to think, then, to summon all the questions I needed answered. “Why is Melisande still regent? Her son has come of age already; why is she still ruling in his stead? Does he have any particular lovers? Does he _spurn_ lovers?” I scrubbed my hands over my eyes and flinched again when I touched the woad-mark beside my right eye. “Elua, Amarante, I don’t even know where to begin, and he’ll probably be in attendance at the recital.”

“Most certainly. Thelesis is, after all, the _Royal_ Poet.”

“I’m surprised that she isn’t the Prince’s Poet.”

“I don’t doubt that Melisande would love that, but I feel as though she’s holding off on declaring the throne his for a reason. She has influence in a good many areas, but whether she feels that officially putting a member of House Shahrizai on the throne would be pushing that influence too far…” Amarante shook her head. “I just don’t know.”

“And I was part of my mother’s weakness against her.”

“Never say that!” Amarante looked shocked. “She did what any mother would do. She protected you. She could have sent you away into safety without her, but like as not an assassin would find her or you and then we’d be in the same position as we are now.”

I sighed. “I can’t see any way I’ll win Melisande over, either as myself or as a Cruithne stranger. Whatever heart of hers that Phèdre somehow warmed seems to be cold as ice now. It will have to be the Prince.”

Amarante shifted to lean back against the pillows, pulling me to sit between her thighs, my back against her breasts, her arms coming around me. “I know little of him, but I’ll tell you what I do know. I think there’s a coldness in him as well. He dallies with Naamah’s Servants, but doesn’t seem to have any particular favorites. He’s got a handful of cousins he prefers over anyone else in House Shahrizai. He doesn’t go anywhere unaccompanied by his guards, most often his Captain of the Guard, Maslin de Lombelon.”

“Lombelon,” I repeated.

“Yes. A small estate, but the Prince won him over by gifting it to him. They had somewhat in common, both being sons of traitors—”

“Isidore d’Aiglemort.”

“Well guessed. Anyway, Maslin’s stuck by the Prince ever since. Funny, since I would have thought he’d want to keep working on the estate, but mayhap he’d a fancy to see the big city. Not that the Prince comes out from the Palace all that often. It’s as if he fears something… perhaps he doesn’t want to be away from his mother.”

“He doesn’t sound like the kind of man to be still clinging to his mother’s skirts at eighteen. Not from the tales Phèdre told me of what he went through. Kidnapping, being dragged across countries into darkness…”

“That might be exactly _why_ he’s clinging to his mother’s skirts. If that’s what he’s doing.” Amarante wriggled herself into a more comfortable position, and I leaned my head back against her shoulder. It was passing strange to have found such intimacy so soon upon embarking on my new life, but I found that I rather liked it. Amarante was good company in and out of the bedchamber—or indeed, in this liminal space between the two—and I did not _think_ that she sought to betray me.

“I somehow doubt it,” I said slowly. “There may be a coldness in him, but Phèdre spoke of the joy he took in life after—after Daršanga.” I stumbled over the pronunciation a little; it was a name that Phèdre had rarely used. My mother hadn’t wanted her to speak of it to me or Alais, but in the last year as the plan for me to return to Terre d’Ange had coalesced it had become necessary. “I would think that if he inherited his mother’s resolve to see her plans come to fruition, his own ideal plan would be to retain that joy in life.” I turned my head to touch my lips to Amarante’s cheek in a light kiss. “Phèdre said that even while they were _in_ Daršanga he was determined to get out into the garden, small though it was.”

“Even the stunted tree reaches toward the sunlight,” Amarante said, with the tone of someone repeating an oft-used quote.

“Can I be his sunlight, though? Can I remind him enough of those bright days to bring him out of his mother’s shadow?”

“You can only try.” Amarante kissed the corner of my mouth. “In the meantime, you could stand to learn a little more of Naamah’s art, in case you do end up bedding him.” I knew from her laugh that I had flushed pink, and not from the kiss. “Oh, Sidonie! You needn’t be so modest about it. It may never come to pass, after all.”

I turned in her arms until I sat astride her lap instead of betwixt her thighs. “True. But I’d still best practice what I know, and learn whatever else you can teach me in four days.”

She kissed my healing tattoo lightly, a feather’s brush, and together we began my next lesson in the ways of physical love.

* * *

The herbal paste had begun to darken my hair overnight; I reapplied it late that morning and sat making a few notes about the Prince on an odd scrap of paper while the paste worked. I was going to have to find someone who took in laundry and arrange for the towels that the gemcutter had provided with the room to be cleaned, as they were a disgraceful mess.

I had always been uneasy about whether or not this plan was a violation of Elua’s sacred precept. _Love as thou wilt._

I loved Terre d’Ange, even though I had spent almost half of my life away from it.

I loved my family, and my mother, and wanted to return her to her throne.

I did not yet know if I could love Prince Imriel, as a friend or as a lover, but I knew I wanted to at least try, to at least see if I could get a glimpse into his life and find whether anything there might be swayed toward letting my family come home.

Alais might not have minded staying in Alba for the rest of her life—it was more home to her than Terre d’Ange had been, as we had fled when she was only seven—but although my mother loved my father and his country, I knew too well how much she missed our homeland.

The longer I spent in the City, hour by hour, I realized how much I, too, had missed it. I might not have run amok through the streets as Phèdre had, to hear Hyacinthe tell it, but things such as the scent of incense, the myriad voices speaking D’Angeline without the addition of an accent, and the number of dedicated temples were familiar, were home.

There was, too, towering Mont Nuit. Like the Palace, it was a well-known edifice, or rather the Thirteen Houses of the Night Court that dotted its slopes were. I had never been there, but if we had remained in Terre d’Ange I would. Probably near to my current age. Young men chose their own Houses in their own time, for the most part; I would have had to take my mother’s counsel in the matter, and probably endure several other people’s opinions into the bargain.

I looked out of the narrow window over the desk that happened to face toward Mont Nuit. I _could_ choose for myself. I could wash my hair free of the clinging paste, cover my woad-mark with a little powder to conceal it somewhat, and go. I reckoned that I had enough coin to cover a visit, although I would have to be even more frugal if I did.

I could choose. I knew well the canons of all the Houses. Some appealed to me more than others.

But in the end, Amarante chose for me.

That came later, though. I was not expecting to see her that evening; she had spoken of work to be done and I had been content with that. I had errands of my own to run.

Amarante had given me the name of a dressmaker willing to make me something simple yet suitable for the Palace for the Royal Poet’s performance. Not a couturier on the level of Favrielle nó Eglantine, but capable of working swiftly. I’d visited the dressmaker, one Elodie Bourchier, first thing that morning. My hair was back in its caul for the time being while I worked at darkening it, and she gave me an odd look for not freeing it, but went on with taking my measurements. She had clicked her tongue at the short notice, but I took it that Amarante had forewarned her with a generous purse, for she waved aside my offer of pre-payment and bade me come back the following afternoon for a trial fitting.

After that I spent the late morning with the herbal paste through my hair once more. I ate lunch outdoors once I had rinsed my hair clean, letting the breeze dry it. Winter was still some time away yet, but the breeze had a nip to it. Alban autumns were far colder, though, and while some of the people who passed me already wore shawls or extra layers, I wasn’t even shivering.

The afternoon saw me finding a woman who would take in laundry and giving my dye-stained towels into her care. I did better than that; I found a woman who ran an entire shop dedicated to the washing and drying of clothes as well as repairs and alterations.

“You might be better off buying new, young miss,” she said, eyeing the brown and blue smears dubiously. I was fortunate that the bloodstains from creating my woad-mark had blended in with the brown of the hair-paste. “I’m not sure these will some clean.”

I shrugged. “Try anyway. I can always use them for dust-rags if not. But is there somewhere you’d recommend for new towels? Perhaps bed-linens as well?” So far I’d only marked one pillowslip a little with my makeshift hair dye, but if I kept reapplying it I was like to turn the whole thing brown.

The laundress smiled. “I do, at that.” She named a couple of shopkeepers and gave me their addresses—and, when I confessed to being a newcomer to the City, directions. “You might tell them that Ginette sent you and sends her regards. We don’t always have the time to see one another, in our lines of work.”

“Ginette,” I repeated. “Thank you, Ginette.”

“These will be ready for you tomorrow morning, assuming the weather doesn’t turn.”

“I’ll return then.”

As I left her shop, a young man almost ran into me the way I had run into Amarante on my first night in the city.

“Sorry, sorry!” He steadied me with a hand to my elbow. “My apologies, miss.” He had a lovely, open face that was crowned with a mass of brown curls. He had a merry smile that tugged at my desires.

“That’s quite all right.” I couldn’t help returning his smile, it was so bright.

“You’ve an accent,” he observed. “Not from the City?”

“No, I’m not,” I said. My hair was still under its caul, and I didn’t know if he’d noticed the woad-mark by my eye, but it was probably too late to keep pretending I was Eisandine. Although it was quite possible that people would mistake me for Tsingano, rather than Cruithne. My head was beginning to ache from trying to keep it straight in my mind. “Sidonie, of Eisande.”

“Simon nó Eglantine,” he returned. “We’ve almost the same initials.”

“So we do.”

“I have some mending to retrieve from Ginette’s shop—” he made a gesture suggesting that the front had torn out of his trousers, and I laughed “—but perhaps I could walk you back to wherever you’re lodged once I’ve fetched it?”

“Or I could walk you back to the foot of Mont Nuit, if that’s where you’re bound. I haven’t been there before, not even close, and I’d like to see it.”

“Done and done!” He ducked into Ginette’s shop, returning with a cloth bag containing his mended clothes, and offered his arm in a courtly gesture. “To Mont Nuit, my lady fair, or at least to Night’s Doorstep.”

I took his arm, and we set off through the streets. This far out from the Palace they were narrower, although still wide enough to admit two carriages passing either way; they had to be, for enough nobles used them to get about the City, not to mention the number of people who rode horses. From the perspective of someone with access to neither carriage nor horse, and who had spent a good deal of her time wandering the paths and by-ways of Alba afoot (though I could and did ride), it seemed excessive.

“A coin for your thoughts, my lady?” Simon asked.

I shook my head. “They’re not worth one. Just contemplating the size of the City compared to home.”

“‘Tis a grand place, containing grander buildings.” Simon nodded at the Palace walls. “The Palace. The temples. Even the Houses on Mont Nuit. But what really makes the City is its people. The nobility, the commoners… the royals.”

I looked sharply at him. He lowered his eyelashes coquettishly, but I knew the remark for what it was. He was trying to discern my thoughts on the current holder of the throne. I didn’t know what he thought, so I didn’t know what the right answer was, and if I hesitated too long he’d know that something was wrong.

“We have little use for the royals where I’m from,” I said as lightly as possible. “I can’t say I know a good deal about them.”

His eyes turned serious for a moment. “Well, then. You ought to know that there are mixed feelings about the current holder of the throne.”

“The regent Melisande Shahrizai.” I tried for guilelessness in my tone. I was not sure that I succeeded. “And her son… Im—something?”

“Imriel.” His tone was at once deprecating and somehow _fond_. “Those feelings are somewhat less mixed when it comes to him.”

“People dislike him?”

“The opposite.”

I eyed him. “You’re being very frank about politics with a simple country lass, Simon nó Eglantine.”

He made a gesture that would have been spreading his hands if he hadn’t had the laundry bag in one hand and his other arm linked with mine. “Well, Sidonie of Eisande, I think you’re safe enough to speak of politics with. If you don’t care to hear of it, then as you say, you have little use for the royals.” His tone was bitter enough that I almost wanted to tell him who I was, that I did care, that I cared a great deal about the rulers of Terre d’Ange, present and future. But I couldn’t. Not even when I thought that that bitterness ran deep.

“I don’t think I could go home knowing what I know now and not be at least a little worried,” I said honestly.

“Well, then.” His face relaxed and he smiled again, although not quite as widely as he had the first time.  “I don’t mean to draw you into the whole mess. It’s just…” He trailed off.

“Just what?”

“I’ve met the Prince once or twice,” he said slowly. “And I don’t think he’s set to follow in his mother’s footsteps. There’s somewhat deep down in him, like a scar that’s never quite healed. I don’t think she’s doing him any good. I don’t think she’s doing him any more harm, but I don’t think she’s doing any good, either.”

I felt a surge of sympathy for the Prince, which I hadn’t quite expected. I’d spent too long thinking he would have fallen under his mother’s sway when he was returned to her. I had obviously not given his time with Phèdre and Joscelin enough credit, nor his blameless childhood at the Temple of Elua, and I felt ashamed. My own life had had so many varied influences that I shouldn’t have assumed that Melisande would be the only one in the Prince’s life.

“Would you support his bid for the throne if he made one?” I found myself asking.

“Me personally? I’d rather see him away from his mother and given time to heal. The mind and soul need as much healing as the body, sometimes. But yes, I suppose I’d rather see him rule than his mother… although he might crumble under the pressure of it.”

“Which might be worse than the present situation.”

Simon nodded. “Even so.”

I bit my lip, thinking. “Do you have any idea how such a thing might be achieved?”

“Short of spiriting him out of the Palace and showering him in affection? No.”

“Was that something you’d thought to do?”

Simon’s lips twisted into a pensive smile. “One of the times that we met was at the Longest Night. He and one of his cousins had acquired tokens to attend the Midwinter Masque up at Cereus House. I think he was the only one there who spent the night brooding.”

“Over what?”

“I did ask him, but he just said that he was thinking. Of what, I couldn’t begin to guess. They say he went through an awful lot as a young boy, and to come home just as the land was in such turmoil…”

He didn’t have to go into detail. Especially not to me, who had been sent _away_ from home just as the land was in such turmoil. “And the marks of it yet linger.”

“The next time I saw him was on his seventeenth natal day. There was a fete at the Palace and I was one of the tumblers contracted to provide entertainment.” He handed me the laundry bag and performed three standing front flips, twisting smoothly at the last to land facing me, his merry smile back in place. I laughed. “He was almost as brooding then, even when everything was supposed to be as he liked it. Come to think of it, that time he _did_ say somewhat to me.”

“Oh? What?”

Simon resumed walking beside me, arm in arm, reclaiming his laundry. “He asked me if being a part of one of the Thirteen Houses was like being a part of a family. I said yes, of course, with all the attendant ups and downs, and he looked wistful and said he felt more down than up.”

“Did he say anything else?” I knew I was pressing hard, perhaps too hard, but every piece of information I could get was valuable.

“No. I only spoke to him briefly. I had to keep entertaining.” His lips curved into another smile. “I did kiss him, though, and if there’s coldness in him, it doesn’t run all the way through.”

We were almost at Mont Nuit now, approaching the part of the City known as Night’s Doorstep, and I looked up the hill, seeing each of the Thirteen Houses in their splendor. I still had the choice to choose, if I willed it; I could even choose to accompany Simon up to House Eglantine, pay his price, see if his merriness extended to his bedroom manner. I suspected that it did.

Instead, when we reached the bottom of the road, I let my arm fall free of his and thanked him for the walk and the conversation.

“You’re welcome.” His face went sober again. “Although I’d rather it if you didn’t repeat what I’ve said to anyone. We’re not all country girls able to go home and live free of politics. Even though you _do_ share a name with the former Dauphine...”

Again, I almost told him then and there who I really was. Instead I dipped him a curtsy. “My lips are sealed,” I promised.

He leaned forward and kissed me, tongue darting over my lower lip just before he pulled back. “I see that they are,” he said, smiling. “If you’ve ever the inclination to unseal them, though, you know where I am!” He was off up the hill before I could manage a reply.

It was a strange encounter, that was for certain. Yet it gave me an idea or two. Simon had mentioned a cousin who had accompanied the Prince to the Night Court. If I could find out who this cousin was, there was a chance that I could get to the Prince through them. It would take some time, though; House Shahrizai had many tangling branches on its family tree. Simon himself might be a source of more information, if he’d observed any interactions between the Prince and his cousins. I almost called after him to ask, but he was too far away for me to not draw undue attention to myself.

Setting aside all thoughts of the Prince for the time being, I looked around myself. The area at the immediate foot of Mont Nuit was almost like a courtyard, a foyer into the “house” constituted by the hill itself. To either side of the open space, though, were houses and taverns and other buildings that I recognized at once from Phèdre’s stories: Night’s Doorstep.

Of a surety, this was no place that I recalled from _my_ childhood.

It looked like a dangerous place to go wandering, at least with my lack of knowledge of the City. Still, I had my knowledge from Joscelin of how to fend off unwanted attention, and I doubted I could come to much harm as long as I was relatively inoffensive. So in I went. Truth be told, I wanted to see where Phèdre and Hyacinthe had grown up, where Phèdre had chosen to go when she tired of life at the Night Court.

Night’s Doorstep was busier than the rest of the City, or perhaps felt that way because of the narrower streets and the crisscrossing lines of clothes that hung overhead. I nearly fell over a running child more than once. A good number of the people I saw were Tsingani. I wondered if Hyacinthe’s Tsingani friends still lived here, or whether they’d chosen to move away.

I soon found out.

I found the tavern that Phèdre had often spoken of, the Cockerel, and hesitated on its threshold.

“Come in or stay out, but shut the door. You’re letting the flies in,” an irritable voice called. I paused a moment longer—did I really want to be in there with the owner of that voice?—but then went in and pulled the door closed behind myself.

The tavern was only a quarter full, if that, its clientele mostly men gathered around tables, dicing or playing cards. The person who had spoken was a man in his forties, portly, with the look of a Tsingano, although unless I missed my guess that was not the only part of his heritage. He sat behind the bar on a tall stool, and leaned forward to inspect me.

“What brings you here, young lady?” he asked.

“I’m new to the city. I’d a fancy to explore,” I said.

“I see.” He straightened up and poured me a cup of watered wine that was both tart and sweet. All the while I was drinking his eyes were on me, although not as though he was ogling me, rather as though he was considering something about me. “You’re not Tsingano.”

“I never said I was.”

“Your eyes and hair look as though you’re trying to be, but your skin’s not dark enough.” He gave me a direct look, then, and I could see that his eyes were as dark as mine. “And you smell of sage and rosemary; it’s a smell I recognize...”

“I do _bathe_ , messire,” I said dryly.

“Still.” He offered me another cup of wine, which I declined. “Are you sure you’re not here to look for family?”

I considered it. Strictly speaking, the Prince _was_ family; a cousin of a sort. But that wasn’t what this man was asking me. “No. Just exploring.”

He nodded slowly. “Well, you’re safe enough here, at least if you don’t mind the occasional bottom-pinch.” He extended his hand across the bar to me. “Emile.”

I knew that name; a friend of Hyacinthe’s. “Sidonie.” His eyebrows shot up and his hand squeezed mine inadvertently. “I’ve been told I share a name with one of the exiled princesses.”

“You do, indeed.” His grip relaxed and he withdrew his hand. “Still, I suppose it would be uncommonly odd for everyone in the world to have a different name. You’d run out of names, eh? Are you sure you won’t have another drink?”

“Quite sure, thank you. I just wanted to get a feel for the place.” I looked around again, this time with more attention to detail. It was a long way from the Palace in terms of its luxuriousness, although I felt that there were probably worse places to be. Of a certainty there were better, but I had no particular inclination to go exploring.

And Emile was fond of Phèdre. So if I needed aught done, I could, perhaps, mention her name.

It was another piece in a puzzle that I was beginning to see the shape of. There were two very key pieces yet to be fitted in, though; the Prince’s cousin, and the Prince himself.

But before I could worry about either of them, I had to go back to my lodgings and commit my thoughts to paper. There were too many of them crowding my mind to sort through without them being somewhere that I could _look_ at them.

* * *

I had spent part of the afternoon exploring, listening to conversations in the street, and trying to gauge the general feeling regarding the Shahrizai influence in the City. Then I had returned to my lodgings to read for a while, as well as writing some of my thoughts down. I had notes on who I’d met and what they’d said, all in a cipher that Phèdre had taught me. It occurred to me that if for whatever reason I was searched, the cipher itself would indicate that I was planning something even if it wasn’t readily apparent _what_ , but in the end I couldn’t think of any other way to do it.

I was still looking at my notes when Amarante—for who else could it be?—knocked at my door. I pushed the pieces of paper into the small desk drawer before rising to admit her.

For once she was not in her priestess robes. Instead, she wore a lovely, simple white dress gathered just below her breasts and then falling straight and narrow, save for where her hips curved outward, to her ankles. I swallowed hard, seeing that the dress was not entirely opaque and that she was bare beneath it.

“See something you like?” she asked.

I reached for her, but she caught my hands between hers.

“Do you have anything that isn’t a wrinkled mess?”

“I’ve pressed all my clothes,” I said indignantly.

As it happened I did have another dress I liked as well as the blue silk. It was cream in color, with a V at the neck and a matching point at the waistline. I’d hung it up so it wouldn’t wrinkle again, and Amarante made a beeline for it.

“Interesting skirt, your highness,” she commented, lifting it and letting each separate section fall one by one.

“The splits are for riding astride. I usually have a lap-blanket over the top. Should I go and ask Elodie if she can finish my new dress this instant?”

Amarante laughed. “Actually, for what I have in mind, this one is perfectly all right.”

“What _do_ you have in mind?” I asked.

“Get dressed and let me show you.”

Usually the things she had in mind involved getting _un_ dressed, but I took her word for it and stripped out of the simple day dress I had been wearing, washing briefly with the cold water in the basin before slipping the cream dress on. I followed Amarante’s example of wearing the dress without any undergarments, although I felt very exposed. She gave me such an approving look, though, that I didn’t even consider reconsidering.

“Are we going far?” I asked, trying to choose which shoes to wear.

“Yes and no. Wear something nice, you don’t have to walk far.”

I looked at her suspiciously, but she gave me a very innocent look and waited for me to put my sandals on. Once I was dressed and had my small purse and a light shawl, she led me outside to where a carriage was waiting.

“Where _exactly_ are we going?”

“You still need to work on patience, Sidonie. Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then let me guide you in this.” Amarante handed me up into the carriage. Once she closed the door behind us we set off, the horses clopping along the street, the carriage riding mostly smoothly over the cobblestones. There were curtains between us and the driver that I tried to peer through, but Amarante pulled me back onto the seat, her hands firm on my wrists. It made my pulse leap, the way that she held me back.

“Oh. You like that?”

“I do.” I had no reason to dissemble.

Amarante squeezed my wrists once more, lighter, and then let go. “I’ve no mind to play Mandrake to your Valerian, but I will keep it in mind.”

The thought made me shiver, and I wasn’t entirely sure why. The tug of arousal between my legs was undeniable, but I didn’t know whether to put it down to being alone together in the dark carriage, or Amarante’s brief grasp on my wrists, or the mystery of where we were going. It seemed like all those things were a part of it.

Eventually the carriage drew to a stop, but Amarante didn’t open the door yet. “You do trust me, don’t you, Sidonie?”

“Yes.” My mouth felt suddenly dry.

“Because if at any point you feel uncomfortable about... about tonight, I want you to tell me.”

“If you’re planning to throw me into a lion’s den, Amarante, I’d prefer to go home.”

She laughed, bubbly with joy. “Of course not.” At last she opened the door, and I saw where we were.

Mont Nuit.

I hadn’t even noticed the carriage’s ascent up the hill, I’d been so distracted with my own thoughts. We were far enough up that the lights of the City spread out below us, bright specks in a dark field. I could hear distant laughter, but it wasn’t coming from the house that we had stopped outside. The gates were wrought with elegant flowers colored white, and the path to the front door was lined with polished white stones that gleamed even in the dusk-light.

“Where...” I asked in a whisper.

Amarante took my arm. “Just trust.”

The door swung open as we approached it. An adept, clad in white that emphasized her dusky skin, came onto the front doorstep. “Be welcome to Jasmine House, sweet ones,” she said, her voice soft. “What pleasures do you seek tonight?”

“I have made an arrangement with your Dowayne for a Showing,” Amarante said.

 _Then_ I understood.

The nature of Showings had not made its way to my tender ears before we left Terre d’Ange, but both Phèdre and my mother had spoken to me of them, both of them ruing the fact that no such thing existed in Alba. My cousin Dorelei had listened with wide eyes when Phèdre spoke of her own Showing, which had swayed her even further toward the path of Naamah’s Servant. My mother was more reticent, but I knew one thing: her Showing, too, had been at Jasmine House.

Jasmine’s canon is sensuality. I hadn’t expected it of my mother. I wasn’t sure I expected it of _me_. But Amarante knew her trade well, and so I followed her and the adept through the hushed halls to the Showing chamber. It was a round room, furnished with soft couches, with red curtains on the far wall that opened into the center of the room, where there was a bed that looked luxuriously comfortable. Amarante drew me down onto one of the couches, and the adept brought us a tray with strawberries, cherries, and small ripe plums.

A Showing, as a reverence to Naamah, is open to all adepts of the House as well as those patrons who have requested it. We were joined by some half-dozen other young men and women, who took up places on the couches. The same adept, whose name I learned was Viveka, circulated with fruit trays and cups of sparkling wine. The red gauze hangings that surrounded the bed in the center of the room stirred occasionally with her passing. The scent of sandalwood hung in the air, and soft music played from the far side of the room; the musicians sat back in an alcove that allowed them to see the room without visually detracting from the Showing. There was a flute, a drum, and a stringed instrument that I hadn’t seen before. The music that they made was low and sweet yet thrilling, sending a tingle through my body.

At last the pair who were performing the Showing came out between the curtains. One woman and one man; such is ever the way for the traditional Showing, although other variations may be arranged at the behest of the patron. They shared Viveka’s tawny skin, which hinted at Bhodistani blood in their background. They both had glossy black hair; hers was long and thick and wavy, while his was shorter but no less lush. She wore a bold red wrap dress that left one shoulder bare, with gold ornamentation that matched the gold mesh caul her hair was caught up in. He wore a tunic over trousers, red over black, with similar gold ornamentation that gleamed in the soft lantern light. Both of them were barefoot on the soft red velvet that covered the floor of the Showing area.

The flute piped a single high note, and the Showing began.

He folded his arms around her waist from behind, kissing the side of her neck, from just below her ear to the juncture where her neck met her shoulder. She tilted her head to the side, giving him better access. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted. His hands were firm at her waist; she reached up to twine her arms around his neck and they kissed, lips clinging together. I saw the way he licked into her mouth and shivered. Amarante kissed well, at least as far as I knew, but this looked more possessive, more like asserting a claim.

I wanted that for myself, from both sides. I wanted to claim and be claimed. I wanted to lay marks on someone’s skin and have marks laid on mine. And, as much as Amarante had taught me in our scant days together, I was craving the spice a man might bring to our bed, not just Amarante’s sweetness.

The couple in the center of the room swayed together to the music, his hands moving to grip her hips. He was kissing the other side of her neck, now, and her breasts rose and fell with the deeper breaths she drew every time his lips touched down.

The golden sash that bound her dress at her waist came away slowly, and it took me a moment to see that his fingers had slid up to the knot and deftly undone it while they were moving together. She turned and took two steps back, hips swaying, and he drew the ends of the sash together, reeling her back in toward him. He dipped her, as one may do in a dance, and pressed his lips to hers in a searing kiss that made me gasp softly. The way he supported her with one hand at the small of her back but the other entangled in her hair; the way she returned his ardor, her hand appearing small as she raked her fingers through his hair in return. It was all so deeply passionate.

The dance continued, both literally and figuratively, as they moved alternately with the music that played from the alcove and with the rhythm they were creating between themselves. They gradually disrobed, and I caught my breath both at the sight of him bare-chested, wearing only his black trousers, and her body emerging from her dress as it slipped from her shoulders, his head bending to her breast. Their marques were black against their dusky skin, his perhaps a handspan tall, hers half as tall again, the leaves of the Jasmine House design beginning to emerge from the tangled stems.

When it came to performing the _languisement_ , he lay back across the bed, his phallus standing strong and proud, and she went to her knees between his thighs, her black hair spread out around her head. I couldn’t see precisely what she was doing with her lips and tongue, but the look of pleasure on his face told me all I needed to know.

“It’s quite different to what you and I have done,” Amarante murmured in my ear, draping one hand not so innocently over my hip. “You’ll learn, though.”

“I wish I could _see_ better,” I said.

As if she had heard me, the female adept pushed her hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ears, and I could see the length of the male adept’s phallus slipping between her lips. Her cheeks hollowed a little as she sucked, and her lips gleamed. I let out a helpless little sound; it was suddenly very easy to imagine myself kneeling to perform the same act.

The two of them traded places. He kissed his way down her body; she spread her arms wide, looking remarkably indolent, until his head was between her thighs, when her body grew noticeably taut. The music quickened a notch, and the heat between my own thighs quickened with it. His hands slipped underneath her buttocks, urging her to rise up against his mouth. Her hands made fists in the coverlet of the bed.

At last they moved to lie together, him behind her like a pair of spoons. She lifted her upper leg, hooking her ankle behind his knee, spreading wide so that he could enter her from behind. It was a variation from the usual Showing position, and I suspected that Amarante had suggested it so that I could more readily appreciate the deeply erotic view. Given their positions, the female adept could do very little other than rock back against her partner. He stretched one arm out underneath her neck, catching her hand, their fingers intertwining; his other hand roamed her body, cupping her breasts, slipping down to stroke her Pearl of Naamah.

He moved slowly within her, softly teasing, until the music from the alcove changed to a swifter pace. Then his hand tightened on her hip, and his movements became harder, more deliberate. She let out a full-throated moan and I could see her body go tense, then soft with pleasure. He spent himself in her a moment later, his lips against the nape of her neck.

Amarante’s fingers slipped inside the split of my skirt and I bit the side of my hand to avoid a cry that would disrupt the end of the Showing.

The music dwindled down until it was just the flautist piping the couple back out through the curtains, carrying their discarded clothes, both looking very much sated, leaning on each other. The other adepts rose and left the chamber in ones and twos, until only Amarante and I remained. The musicians had withdrawn, and I suspected there was another door at the back of their alcove.

“What did you think of that, your highness?” Amarante’s voice had more than the hint of a laugh in it. Her fingers were still close to my center and she would have had to be utterly oblivious not to know exactly what I’d thought of it.

“Lovely,” I said, my voice muzzy with desire. I swallowed and tried to sit up, but Amarante held me close, fingers dancing, and I gave into another cresting peak of pleasure. I dare say she would have held me there longer, but a gentle cough from the doorway informed us that Viveka was waiting.

“We do need to tidy up in here,” she said with a soft smile.

Amarante nonchalantly wiped her fingers on a napkin that had come with the fruit tray and helped me to my feet. I was wrung out, although not as profoundly as the adepts we had watched had been. I barely knew what passed between Amarante and Viveka, save for Amarante presenting Viveka with a patron-gift specifically for the couple who had performed for us. The notion that they would have another inch or so of marque thanks to us was surprisingly heady, not that I needed to be any more mazed than I was.

The carriage was waiting for us outside. We drove back to my lodgings. Amarante came inside with me, and helped me undress and crawl into bed. She slid in beside me and wrapped her arms around me. We fell asleep like that, like spoons, like the lovers we’d just watched.


	4. Chapter 4

I woke at dawn on my third day in the City with my stomach growling. Amarante lay asleep, her bright hair spread out over my pillow. I dressed, left her a note saying that I was going to get breakfast and went out into the cool morning.

The City stirring awake was different than the City at midday, or even at night. The predominant smell was freshly baked bread, which only made my stomach growl louder. I bought bread still warm from the oven, and butter, and a pot of raspberry preserves so richly red that I wanted to lick it straight out of the container. We could have drunk water, but the stallholder who had the butter also had fresh milk, and I bought that as well, thinking of Necthana urging Alais and I to drink our milk when we were children for strong bones and teeth.

Amarante was still asleep when I returned, but she woke when I sat down and started cutting slices off the loaf of bread. She gave me a plaintive, begging look that reminded me absurdly of Alais’ favorite hunting dog.

“You’re not getting crumbs in my bed,” I said firmly, and she laughed and got up, twisting the top sheet around herself like a toga and coming to sit on the edge of the desk. She poured the milk while I spread the bread with butter and jam. The food was all just as good as the tantalizing smells had promised.

“What plans have you made for today?” Amarante asked, biting into a piece of bread.

“I met an adept of Eglantine House yesterday. He mentioned a cousin of the Prince’s who apparently accompanied him to the Midwinter Masque at Cereus House two years ago. If I could find that cousin, perhaps I could gain a little more information to help me see how to go on from here.” I took another bite of my bread. The jam was so good. I’d have to remember to get more, assuming that I ran out before my time in the City was done. “There are an awful lot of Shahrizai cousins, though.”

“I can help you there,” Amarante said. “I’d wager that the cousin you’re looking for is Mavros Shahrizai. He’s almost of an age with Imriel, and I’ve seen them riding out together. In fact, now that you mention it, I think he trusts Mavros almost as much as he trusts Maslin.”

“His Captain of the Guard.” My head was full of new names, but at least I had faces to put to most of them. “Do they all three go anywhere together?”

“Sometimes. Why?”

“Only that it might be easier to gauge how they interact if it’s all three at once.”

Amarante laughed. “I don’t think you can expect everything to go exactly your way.”

But it did, or very nearly so.

Amarante left me to myself after breakfast. I had worn my simplest clothes to the market and kept them on. My hair was now brown enough that I thought it safe to let it free of the caul, although I put it into one thick braid to keep it out of my face. The angry red around my woad-mark had faded, but I slathered it with more of the balm anyway. Looking into the mirror, I judged myself unrecognizable as the heir of House Courcel.

I just hoped that the rest of the City would judge me thus.

I couldn’t exactly march up to the Palace and demand an audience with the Prince. I had no illusions about that. But there was Elua’s Square, and I thought that enough people passed through it in the course of each day that I might learn something. I took the book I’d been reading with me as cover, although I spent more time looking over it than at it. I sat near a pretty fountain that was drawing the attention of enough people that I reckoned I might hear something useful.

Then I waited.

People came and went; so many people! I had been comparing the City of Elua to Bryn Gorrydum in my head in many ways, mainly in appearance, but in other ways as well, comparing and contrasting my memories of childhood here to the way the City looked now, and to the city of my adolescence. I couldn’t judge simply based on sitting in one place, of course, but I thought that Elua’s City had to hold at least twice the people that Bryn Gorrydum did, even taking into account the sprawling outer crofts close to the latter.

The fountain was loud, but not so loud that I couldn’t hear people’s conversations. They came in snippets, but occasionally someone would stand still long enough that I could hear quite a bit more. I listened avidly.

“—thinks he will never return from his estate, but I never saw L’Envers as a weak—”

“—was minded to just pack up and leave—”

“—Night Court ask how it can be called _love_ , when she’s so well established as regent, and he’s lost in her shadow, as though he’s still just a child.”

I would have liked to hear more from that speaker, but they moved away, and I’d turned too late to see who they were. I settled back to continue listening and watching.

“—whole family’s a hive of scum—”

“—market? I’d like more cheese and grapes, if we’re to—”

Of course, some snippets were more useful than others, but I kept listening, until I felt the presence of someone else sitting down beside me. I tried to turn, but their arms went around me, pinning my own arms to my side, sending the book tumbling to the ground.

“Don’t turn around,” a masculine voice murmured right beside my ear. “Don’t scream, or kick, or anything. I won’t hurt you.”

My heart was hammering in my chest, but I summoned my best Courcel haughtiness. “If you’ve no intent of hurting me, messire, then why the stealth?”

“I could ask the same of you,” he countered. “You’ve been sitting here for almost an hour, and not turned a page in your book once. Who or what are you waiting for?”

“Knowledge,” I said evenly.

There was a soft intake of breath. “Am I to take it that you’re a spy, then?”

I tried to turn my head, but he had me well pinned. It made me think of the Jasmine adepts dancing, his chest to her back, and a shiver ran through me. “Not at all. I seek only to learn more of the city. I haven’t been here long.”

“Oh, really?” He sounded _amused_ , of all things. “Where do you hail from, little book-reader?”

“Eisande.” The lie was coming easier to my lips every time I used it. “Speaking of books, you’ve dropped mine. Can I have it back?”

“I’m not ready to let you go just yet.”

“I _will_ scream. You’ve no incentive to stop me. You can hardly kill me here, in full view of all these people.”

“No. But you can hardly draw such attention to yourself in full view of all these people.”

“Why?”

Instead of speaking, one of his hands lifted, a fingertip unerringly tracing the arch of my eyebrow. “You share your cousin’s brows. A small thing, but mayhap one you don’t want people noticing.”

The caul, the dye, the tattoo; there was no point in them if every second person could recognize me by my damned _eyebrows_. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you do… Sidonie.”

I bit my lip, but couldn’t hold back a gasp. “Who are you and what do you want?”

“I’m a friend of your cousin’s. I want to know what you’re doing here, what designs you have on the throne, and whether they involve any harm coming to my cousin or his mother.”

Suddenly I was quite sure that I was being held by one of two people: Maslin de Lombelon, or Mavros Shahrizai. And since soldiers were not given to stealthily approaching people... “Mavros Shahrizai, I take it.”

His restraint was as good as mine; I felt his arms involuntarily tighten, but that was all. “Oh, well _done_.” He lowered his arms, letting me turn to face him. “I might have known you wouldn’t spend much time with Phèdre nó Delaunay without picking up at least some of her tricks.”

“What happens now? Do you turn me over to the regent—” I couldn’t quite bear to say her name aloud, not here “—and leave me to her mercies, or just drown me in the fountain to save me the pain?”

Mavros gave me a quizzical look. “Whatever makes you think I want you out of the way? You might be just the person to help me.”

“Help you? With what?”

“Saving Imriel.”

* * *

For the sake of privacy, we took our conversation to the Shahrizai townhouse. I disliked the idea, but had nowhere better to suggest other than Charlotte’s back room, and Mavros would make more of a spectacle in those narrow streets than one woman entering the townhouse would. Indeed, _only_ one woman entering the townhouse would perhaps cause more gossip; the Shahrizai usually entertained their Night Court adepts in groups.

Mavros led me to a private receiving room. There were a number of reclining couches and soft chairs; I chose a wooden chair at a small table against the wall, and Mavros sat down across from me, a smile curling his lips.

“So, Terre d’Ange is faced with another lost heir to the throne.”

“He was never a true heir to the throne,” I said, somehow managing to keep my calm.

“I know it. I hear it every day. More so than most people do. House Shahrizai may be ascendant, but that doesn’t spare us from those people who do dare to speak against us. It’s growing more and more every day, and when the tide finally turns it’s going to be a bloody one.”

“You think they’ll rise up against the regent?”

“I know it.” He gave me a direct look. “I’ll be honest with you, saving my own hide is my first priority. But I’d very much like to get Imriel out of the City. The rest of my family can look out for themselves, but he can’t.” Mavros sighed. “Well, he probably could, but he deserves better than to be left to fend for himself. I’m sure his mother has a plan to spirit him away again if need be, but I’m equally sure that she has no idea just how bad it is in the City.”

“Does she not hear people’s complaints?”

“She does, but for the most part she just doesn’t care. I think… I think she’s grown less cautious with time. I think she’s lost her touch. She was so driven to get her son back, and then when she thought him dead, her resolve began cracking. Then when he came back after all, she chose to stay and continue her fight for the throne instead of taking him and leaving.”

I remembered Melisande’s fight for the throne. Much of it had involved secrets and threats and poison words whispered in the night, politics wielded both covertly and openly, and the direct threat to Alais and I. Yes, she had been cracking. Threatening my mother was one thing, but directing it at Alais and I only mimicked the way that her own son had been taken from her, sold into slavery, into darkness.

Or perhaps that was why she had done it.

Because she knew it would work.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked.

“Melisande’s already grown used to Imri and I coming and going. We’ve ridden out for nights at a time, provided she knows where we’re going and that Maslin comes with us. He feels much as I do, by the way: that she’s no good for Imri, the City, or Terre d’Ange as a whole. So I thought we’d tell her we were going to Lombelon to give him a rest-break away from the City, and then never come back.” My skepticism must have shown on my face. “Oh, not as simply as that. We’d have to get him clean out of the country, and with the Master of the Straits keeping watch over exactly where D’Angeline ships come and go, that’s a difficult prospect.”

“I can help you there, at the very least.”

“I think you can do more than that. I think what he needs the most is the support and love that he had at the hardest time in his life, and you can get him there.”

“Phèdre and Joscelin.”

“Even so.” He studied me, running his fingers idly through his shining blue-black hair. “You’ve a lot of strength, coming here. Or stupidity.”

“It was my choice, either way.” I folded my arms on the table and leaned toward him, noting the way his gaze dipped to my décolletage and then rebounded to my face. “I doubt you’d try to enlist me into your plans if you truly thought that it was stupidity, though.”

“True enough.” He kept playing with his hair. It was done up in a myriad tiny braids. I found myself wondering what it would feel like if I touched it. “The part of the plan where we get him beyond Lombelon is the part that’s got me at a standstill.”

“Where _is_ Lombelon?”

“L’Agnace. Quite close to the City.”

That wasn’t much help. “Well, either we carry on north to Azzalle and pray Melisande doesn’t think of it as the first resort, or…”

“Or?”

“Circle back around to Eisande,” I said slowly.

“Your purported homeland.”

“She might look there. She might not.” The plan was beginning to fix itself in my mind. “I’ve an ally in Marsilikos, at any rate, who’d get us aboard a ship as discreetly as possible. Once we’re at sea she won’t find us, not easily. It would mean taking the long way to Alba, if you’re bound on getting the Prince to Phèdre and Joscelin, but we could do it.”

“What if she sends the Royal Fleet out?” Mavros was leaning forward as well, now, his blue eyes gleaming. I wondered what would have become of me if he’d been the first to find me instead of Amarante, if I’d been brought back here instead of the Temple of Naamah. I suspected it would have led to sharper pleasures than I’d found with Amarante. Sharper, but no less pleasurable for it.

“That’s the part where I’m not so sure. She might. She might have them guarding the area, but we might slip through. She might be so sure that we’ve gone north that she might not send them at all.”

Mavros blew a breath out. “That’s far too many _mights_ for my liking, my lady.”

“She might also find a way to send someone to Alba to be awaiting us when we arrive.”

“That, I find far less likely.”

“I agree. I was just raising it as a possible problem.”

“We might not be able to get him out of the Palace at all. It would only take one person to overhear the wrong thing and send word to Melisande.”

“You were the one who used my name in Elua’s Square,” I said.

“Yes, well, I thought I was being clever,” Mavros said wryly.

“Never mind that now. There’s you and me to perform this magic vanishing act. Who else do you trust?”

“Maslin,” Mavros said promptly. “Lombelon’s his estate, after all, and the people there remember Imriel giving it to him as well as the steps Melisande took to the throne. They’ll sympathize with Imriel over Melisande.”

“Why don’t more people?” It was a question that had been gnawing at my mind for a good while. Years, even. “Why do people sympathize with her at all?”

Mavros bowed his head. His braids swung forward, obscuring his face. “Did you truly not hear, in Alba?”

“Rumors.”

“There are people who believe that Ysandre—your mother—valued her children over her country, and that was why she fled to Alba when the threat to her throne arose.”

“But—”

“More than that, they believe that she didn’t care about Terre d’Ange as long as she had _somewhere_ to rule. That as the Cruarch’s wife and bearer of his children, her loyalties shifted to Alba. That Melisande reluctantly stepped in, as the mother of the missing heir to the throne, to rule as regent until such time as a replacement could be found, or the Queen persuaded back to Terre d’Ange.”

My anguish and anger must have shown on my face, because when Mavros lifted his head and looked into my eyes, he reached across the table to take my hands between his, holding them in a loose but surprisingly comforting warm grasp.

“How could people believe that?” I whispered. “How could they ever doubt my mother’s loyalty to Terre d’Ange? How could they think that _Melisande_ , of all people, valued it more than my mother?” Her name slid off my tongue with venom.

“Fear,” Mavros said. “Fear, and being unaware of just where the threat to the throne truly lay, and…” He hesitated. I gave him a sharp look. “Simple inertia, my lady. If people’s lives can carry on as they ever have, even if the ruler of the country changed, then caring about the specific ruler can be difficult.”

I remembered the careless remark I’d made to Simon nó Eglantine about having little use for the royals in Eisande, and flinched.

“Then when Imriel _did_ return, and Phèdre and Joscelin followed— _appeared_ to follow your parents to Alba rather than resuming life in the City, it was harder again for people to believe that your mother hadn’t just chosen to leave. Not when Phèdre was… when Phèdre…”

“I can guess. People assumed that Phèdre and Mother were lovers, and if they’d both gone to Alba together it must be to roll in the hay and let Father and Joscelin get on with the business of ruling the place. Unless they thought something was happening between all four of them?”

Mavros’ mouth hung open for a moment before he shook himself and regained his composure. “You’ve quite the imagination, Sidonie.”

I resisted the urge to mention that Phèdre had been responsible for the theoretical part of my education in the arts of the bedchamber, and said only, “Do you know if the Prince intends to attend the Royal Poet’s performance?”

“He wouldn’t miss it. He dotes on Thelesis. She’s a very ill lady, you know. These days she usually writes and her apprentice Gilles speaks, but she wanted to start performing again when she could.” Mavros’ face went unexpectedly sober. “I think she doesn’t want to just slip away. She’s like an Eglantine in that way—they like to leave a mark on your life.”

I thought of Simon. Simon and his talk of politics; Simon who had suggested Mavros to me in the beginning. “So I’ve heard.”

“What about you? Have you any contacts in the City who we might employ for this grand plan? Childhood friends, old nurses, anything like that?”

“I’ve a lover who’s a Priestess of Naamah,” I said as offhandedly as I could, just for the pleasure of seeing his jaw drop again.

“ _How_ long did you say you’d been in the City? You don’t waste time!”

We played with a number of ideas for a good while, passing them back and forth, embroidering them into a plan, or at least a semblance of one. I found myself thinking of Phèdre more than once. Of my mother, riding alone towards the City, before I had been born. I could see it in my mind’s eye even so.

It was out of the City that we intended to ride, though. A long, long way out.

“I suppose you _can_ ride?” Mavros enquired.

“I can ride. Give me a bow and arrow and I can shoot a man out of his saddle.”

Mavros let out a low whistle. “I wouldn’t care to make you prove it, my lady.”

It was mid-afternoon by the time we drew our discussion to a close. Mavros escorted me to the front door and gave me the kiss of parting, his lips firm and sure. I thought he might have been expecting surprise on my part, but it was a D’Angeline custom I’d grown attached to swiftly.

Just like other D’Angeline customs: enjoying physical love, delighting in good food and drink, and concocting plots revolving around Imriel Shahrizai.

* * *

Amarante met me for dinner at an inn close to the Palace walls and almost immediately guessed that I’d met Mavros. Or met someone, at any rate, who was going to be able to help us.

“My new friend is very concerned about his cousin’s welfare,” I said without naming names, spooning soup into my mouth. “He’d like his cousin to take some time away from the City, at a mutual friend’s estate. And then perhaps some fresh sea air.”

“Sea air can be bracing,” Amarante agreed. “Will he seek such healing in Eisande?”

“We thought so, although we haven’t ruled out Azzalle.”

“I think Azzalle would be _too_ bracing.”

It was amazing just how much one could say without actually saying it.

I turned my attention to my food. After the vegetable soup we had squab cooked with figs and wine, delicately herbed; this was followed by an apple tart with a hint of cinnamon and brandy, in pastry so fine it near melted on my tongue.

After we ate, Amarante took me back to her dwelling to see some texts on the arts of Naamah that Phèdre had not had in Alba. Like as not she’d had them in Terre d’Ange, but none of us had had time to sort through our possessions and choose what to take with us.

We didn’t just read them, of course; there were practical lessons as well. Lessons that left me wrung out with pleasure. I fell asleep in her bed, her arm thrown over my waist, her breathing soft against my neck.


	5. Chapter 5

I was late to collect my cleaned towels from Ginette and to go and see Elodie for my dress fitting. Ginette didn’t mind and was happy to gossip a little before she let me go, although she said nothing of import to my plans.

Elodie was a little less forgiving.

“You’re not the only one who needs my assistance, especially so close to a big event as this,” she pointed out.

“My apologies, mistress,” I said meekly, standing in place on a stool as she pinned up my hem.

“Oh, never mind. I’d rather be the one to dress you in something finer than that wretched blue thing you were wearing, than to know you were out there wearing it again.”

I loved my fine Alban slubbed silk, and now both she and Amarante had disparaged it. I was almost determined to wear it to the recital out of spite.

Finally Elodie pronounced my trial fitting to be sufficiently successful.

“Come back tomorrow morning. And I do mean _tomorrow_ morning, not the day of the recital.” She fixed me with a warning glare, although her smile diminished the effect. “I know the City is large, child, but you needn’t explore it all in one day.”

I assured her that I wouldn’t, and then made my way back to my lodgings.

I had a good deal more to write down about the events of the previous day. As well as my own personal notes, I took the time to write letters home. They, at least, were something that Roxanne de Mereliot had no fears about sending on, on one of the few D’Angeline ships that still sailed to Alba. As saddened as I was by the fact that she wasn’t taking a more active stance against Melisande, I could understand her position, and I hoped that we would not have to enlist her assistance beyond securing a ship.

I also wrote a message that I hoped I could send safely to Barquiel L’Envers. It was couched in the floweriest language that I could manage, which wasn’t very—I wasn’t given to poetry—but if he could read between the lines, he would know it for a call to arms.

I still wrote Phèdre’s letter in code. It seemed safer, in case someone decided to open the packet along the way. It wasn’t addressed to her on the outside; I’d agreed to send any letters home care of my cousin Dorelei, and letters to me—if there were any—were to be sent to the Temple of Naamah, in care of one Raphael nó Gentian. I hadn’t met him yet, but I had not been in the City nearly long enough for a letter to have come for me.

Given the plans Mavros and I were making, it was unlikely that I would be at all.

One of the plans we’d made was for me to meet Maslin. Mavros had chosen the time and place—noon, at the same fountain where we’d met—and if he could not persuade Maslin to come, he would come himself to let me know. After what he had said yesterday I had no doubt that Maslin would come if he could. It seemed he was very protective of the Prince, and little wonder considering that the Prince had given him the gift of his well-loved estate.

I was going to have to start thinking of the Prince as Imriel. I refused to think of him as the Dauphin. But I would have to accord him his first name, at least, considering the intent of my journey here. To be honest, I had never quite thought I would simply seduce him away from the throne. There were other things I could promise him that would entice him, though. Two things, two people, in particular.

Phèdre and Joscelin.

As I prepared to go out to meet Maslin, I wished I had Phèdre with me to offer me advice. At the very least she could have shored up my courage, for the timeline that Mavros and I were mapping out meant that we were going to take action very, very soon.

* * *

Maslin took me by surprise.

I was expecting someone rigid and unyielding, someone like I remembered the guards being when I was a child. Indeed, when he first approached my waiting place at the fountain, his carriage was upright and stiff. He looked like Joscelin at his most formal, the effect only heightened by the fact that his hair was a light color close to Joscelin’s blond. However, when he came closer I saw that it was much lighter than Joscelin’s, almost pure silver.

But when his eyes locked with mine, a smile of relief broke across his face and brought a bright light to his eyes.

“So it’s true,” he said, hastening to sit beside me, taking my hands in his. “My lady, you have no idea how relieved I am to see you!”

“That’s true,” I said wryly. “Would you like to explain _why_?”

It was little I hadn’t heard before—the growing discontent of the D’Angeline people about their head of state, the concerns about Imriel’s wellbeing. But Maslin added a more personal note.

“She’s so cold,” he said of Melisande. “I don’t think she means to be, but I think something broke inside her when she thought she’d lost her son.”

I rubbed the backs of his hands soothingly with my thumbs. “How do you think she’ll react when she thinks she’s lost him again?”

“Mavros already asked me that. She’ll go mad enough to be easily deposed, I imagine. Probably by Barquiel L’Envers, at least until your mother can come back to Terre d’Ange. He’s no longer the Royal Commander, of course, and he chafes at it. It’s no secret that he’s never had any affection for House Shahrizai. I think he’d serve well as regent until you can get word to your mother to come home.” He said it all very matter-of-factly. I somehow doubted that he’d only been thinking on it since Mavros had spoken to him.

“What do you think the Prince will say when you propose this plan to him?”

Maslin looked supremely uncomfortable. “Well...”

I stared at him in shock. “You’ve already told him.”

Maslin pulled his hands free of mine and made a sign toward the nearest wall. There was a figure leaning against it, one wrapped in a cloak, though the day was not particularly cold. It detached from the wall as I watched and walked toward us.

“Elua’s sake, Maslin!”

“I had to. _He_ had to. He needed to see you, to know that it was true.”

The figure joined us, sitting on the other side of Maslin, drawing its hood back enough that I could see a familiar profile, the glint of sunlight off black hair, and the deep-sea glimmer of blue eyes.

“Cousin,” said Prince Imriel.

“Cousin,” I returned. “What is your will in this matter?” It was hard, so hard, to remain cool, when I knew that if he spoke a wrong word, or if I did, I would be dead.

“I miss my family,” the Prince said simply. “My chosen family, not the one I bide with at the Palace.”

“Phèdre and Joscelin.”

“Yes.”

“They miss you too.”

The Prince smiled sadly. “They told me they’d never let me out of their sight again.”

Unexpectedly, my heart ached for him. “Not every plan goes as intended, cousin.”

“I hope that this one runs smoother.” He rose to his feet. “I do have one other condition, though.”

“What _now_?” Maslin asked, irritably enough that I thought he’d done quite some negotiating of conditions already.

“I’ll explain later.” He dipped his head toward me, an unconscious courteous gesture. “Cousin.”

“Cousin,” I said again, watching him cross the Square, swallowed up anonymously by the people moving to and fro.

Maslin let out a breath. “I didn’t know he was going to do that.”

“What?”

“Accept so readily. Although I can’t think what this other condition of his could possibly be. It’s not as if he’s set that many anyway.”

“What conditions _has_ he set?”

“That L’Envers, or whoever comes for his mother when the time is right, grant her the clemency of exile.”

“ _What_?” My voice rose; people looked at me curiously. “Maslin, she _can’t_ go into exile. She can’t claim asylum, or drop off the face of the world, or anything of the sort. She has to be held accountable for her deeds, and considering that she’s been coercively holding the throne for several years by threatening to kill me and my sister if my parents ever step foot in Terre d’Ange again, she has a great deal of accountability.”

“I told him yes.” Maslin held a finger to my lips before I could protest. “My lady, our best course of action is to accede to his wishes, or at least appear to. He may dislike his current position as Dauphin as much as the rest of the country does, but his mother has twisted something in him so that he can’t help but sympathize with her.”

I shivered. “That’s horrible.”

“That’s Melisande Shahrizai.” Maslin let out a harsh laugh. “But we can’t march against her, because she’s got the resources to stab us all in the back.”

It was a fell note to end our meeting on, but Maslin had to get back to his duties and, after that rather grisly mental image, I wanted to go and get a drink somewhere quiet. The Cockerel wasn’t quiet as such, but it had the advantage of Emile’s somewhat familiar face, and I knew that he wouldn’t bother me if I chose to sit alone.

As it happened, I wasn’t alone. A voice hailed me as I entered the tavern, and I recognized Simon nó Eglantine, waving to me from a table near one of the windows. I went to sit with him, and Emile brought me a cup of watered wine and a plate with bread and cheese without my needing to ask.

“Have you had any luck conversing with House Shahrizai?” Simon asked innocently enough when Emile was out of hearing range.

“More than I expected.” I bit into a piece of bread, feeling the crust crunch between my teeth. “The cousin I spoke to seems to feel as you do about the need for healing.”

Simon took a piece of cheese, but crumbled it between his fingers rather than eating it. “And is there any way I might aid in this healing process?” he asked.

My pulse sped up. “There might be. Did you have somewhat in mind?”

“Oh, just general support. Odd tasks where needed. Mayhap I can provide entertainment. We Eglantines are multi- talented.”

I laughed. “Is that so?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I wonder whether one of your talents is a knack for persuasion?”

Simon gave me a long, appraising look. “Mayhap. Why?”

“We need to convince Emile that you knew Phèdre when she was in the City, and that she sent you a message to pass on to Barquiel L’Envers,” I said in a lower voice. “He has discreet messengers. He can make it happen.”

Simon smiled. “I think I can manage that. But do you have the message?”

“Yes.” Thankfully I’d brought it with me in the hopes that Maslin might have known someone to courier it. I’d completely forgotten to ask him in the shock of meeting the Prince. I pulled it out and passed it to Simon underneath the table.

“He might not believe me. I’m a good deal younger than your Phèdre, you know.”

“Old enough to remember what things were like in the City when she was still here, before Melisande exiled her,” I said. Simon’s lips went thin and he nodded. I slid out of my seat and left some coins on the table to pay for our food and drinks, and more for Simon to give to Emile for his messenger. “Good luck.”

“Barquiel L’Envers,” Simon said, catching my wrist. “Why?”

“Because he’s used to holding the fort,” I said. “And there’s a large fort in need of holding.”

“I see.” His dark eyes met and held mine. “Well, then, Sidonie of Eisande, I will seek to have your message delivered.”

I lifted his hand and kissed the back of it. “My thanks, Simon nó Eglantine.”

I had no doubt that he knew who I was, now, but he was doing a remarkable job of keeping it a secret. Perhaps he could be relied upon for more than just this one task.

* * *

Mavros rolled his eyes and laughed when I told him that Simon was aiding us.

“Your family does seem to find help from the most unexpected places in these endeavors.”

“How so?”

“Your mother’s two greatest companions, my lady. Who else?”

But he wanted to meet Simon himself to be sure of him. I suspected that the scions of House Shahrizai had been trained in the ways of covertcy as much as possible, and if he wanted to question Simon and examine his responses for the tell-tales of lies, then so be it.

To that end, Mavros sent a request to House Eglantine, asking to contract Simon’s services for the following day, so that the three of us could meet together. He heard back almost immediately, as though Simon had been waiting for someone to contact him.

“Will you actually make use of his services?” I asked curiously.

Mavros winked. “What do _you_ think?”

I thought I wouldn’t mind being in the room when Simon arrived, but elected not to say anything.

* * *

Far from being angry that I’d involved another person, however discreetly, Amarante was delighted.

“He doesn’t have any direct connections to the Palace or Prince Imriel,” she said, gesturing with her fork and flicking bits of potato gratin everywhere. “He’ll have ideas about disguises if we need them. You couldn’t have chosen more wisely if you _had_ chosen, Sidonie.”

“I don’t think I chose him. I think Naamah may have sent him to us,” I said. “One of Her Servants to aid in our plans.”

Amarante wrinkled her nose at me. “And what does that make me, pickled cabbage? She’s got me on your side, after all.”

“One can never have too many Servants of Naamah,” I said solemnly.

Amarante laughed. “If you’d met some of the people I knew when I was your age, you’d change your mind.”

“Besides, we have plenty of people involved already. You, Maslin, Mavros... anyone who’s heard my name and doesn’t think it a mere coincidence that it’s the same as one of the exiled princesses.”

“You’d be surprised how few people remember your name.” She must have caught the hurt expression that I couldn’t quite hide in time. “You were young when you were sent away, and it’s been years since then. People forget.”

“ _I_ never forgot who I was,” I said sharply.

Amarante bowed her head and murmured an apology before picking her fork back up and resuming her meal. I regretted snapping at her, but finished eating in silence.

I did my apologizing later, in her bed, between her thighs.


	6. Chapter 6

As Elodie had demanded, I went to see her in the morning, waiting at the front of her busy shop while she saw two other customers. She might not have had the pull of grander ateliers, but she certainly had some influence in the world of D’Angeline fashion.

“I was inspired by Bhodistani attire for you,” Elodie said when it was at last my turn. She bade me strip and I did so, and then she had me raise my arms to drop a good deal of surprisingly light material over my head. “The wrapping is simple enough. You should be able to get into it on your own. Or out of it on your own.” She tugged the material down and smiled at me. “Though I doubt you’ll be on your own by the time you come to get out of it.”

Every time I thought I was getting used to how candid the native D’Angelines were about these matters, someone said something else unexpected and made me blush.

Elodie fussed and tugged at the fabric, showing me how it needed to lie, and then stepped back with a look of satisfaction. “There. With a few more days I could make it truly unique, but as a gown for a recital—even one of Thelesis’ recitals—it will serve nicely.”

“Thank you so much,” I said. Amarante had paid her in advance, but I added more coin to her purse. “For the short notice.”

Elodie sniffed and waved her hand, but as she glanced around the busy shop and her harried assistants, I knew she was grateful of it.

I took the dress back to my lodgings. Charlotte hailed me from inside her shop as I passed.

“I’ve been working on a piece inspired by you,” she said, holding up a small pendant. “I don’t often work gold, but it was just what called to me for this piece.” She handed it to me, and I inspected it. It was a triquetra in a circle, like my tattoo, finely worked. It felt warm in my hand. Charlotte had embedded a small light blue sapphire in the center where the leaves overlapped.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathed.

Charlotte looked self-satisfied. “I’d hoped you would think so. It’s yours, if you want it.”

“I can’t just take it from you.”

“Consider it a gift for being an excellent boarder. I haven’t heard anything amiss from you, unlike some. Except the usual, of course.” That addition brought my blush out again. I was beginning to tire of it.

In the end we settled on a price she would accept, for I wouldn’t let her go unpaid. Her primary request was that I tell people who made it, if they asked.

Charlotte also happened to have gold-and-sapphire eardrops, as well as a simple gold hair ornament that, when I asked about it, she said she had been working for practice. It seemed only fair that I purchase those as well. I hadn’t brought much in the way of jewelry with me to Terre d’Ange; I was dressing _not_ to be noticed, after all.

I took the dress and jewelry up to my room, hanging the dress carefully so that it wouldn’t wrinkle—Elua forbid Amarante see me with wrinkled clothes ever again; she would have my head—and placing the jewelry in the desk drawer. I assumed that Charlotte was rarely robbed, or she wouldn’t be doing so well for herself, but I wasn’t going to just leave everything lying out on the desk for all to see. It was the same reason I had hidden my notes away at the very back of the same drawer.

* * *

When I arrived at the Shahrizai townhouse that afternoon I was admitted by a maid, who said diffidently that Mavros was otherwise engaged upstairs, but would be down shortly. I settled into the receiving room and waited, certain that I knew exactly what Mavros was engaged in.

He came downstairs at last, looking thoroughly sated. Simon followed him, his eyes dazed, but his smile no less bright.

“Quite flexible, these tumblers,” Mavros greeted me, pouring himself a cup of wine and dropping into one of the chairs, slinging his leg over the arm of it and patting the seat between his thighs. Simon sat down and leaned back against him. They looked quite charming together, clothing half-rumpled and eyes heavy-lidded.

“I take it you’ve chosen to trust him, then,” I said.

“I don’t just trust everyone I bed,” Mavros said loftily. Simon snorted laughter. “But yes. If nothing else he’s had his teeth very close to some very intimate places, and that sort of thing makes a man more inclined to trust another man.”

“Do you even hear how crass you sound?” Simon asked, sounding genuinely interested.

The maid who’d greeted me earlier knocked at the half-open door. “Two more guests for you, messire,” she said to Mavros, who raised an eyebrow, but told her to admit them.

Maslin’s presence wasn’t entirely unexpected, but he brought an unexpected guest to our meeting: Thelesis de Mornay, bundled in a thick cloak against the cold. They came bearing the Prince’s final condition for the plan: he wanted Thelesis to come with us.

“He says she’s stifled by Melisande because Melisande won’t let her write anything, or at least recite anything, based on anything to do with anyone who Melisande’s exiled. He’s very attached to her, and feels her rightful place is with Queen Ysandre,” Maslin said.

“And I agree with him, even though he didn’t _ask_ me,” Thelesis said, her low voice melodious. “I’d rather be in exile again than dying on this diet of stifled creativity.” Her dark eyes flashed. “Sidonie, _please_.”

“We’ll need to think about this,” Mavros said dubiously.

“Think without me,” Maslin said. “I’m meant to be running sword drills, and they’ll miss me before long.” He kissed Thelesis’ cheek. “Bring her back safely.”

We hadn’t planned to add an extra person to our party, but Mavros hit upon the idea immediately: Thelesis wouldn’t come with us to Lombelon, but would instead go directly to Marsilikos and remain in Roxanne de Mereliot’s care until we could join her. Another of Emile’s messengers could alert Roxanne. At this rate we were going to be turning out our purses to pay the portly Tsingano for all his aid.

For Thelesis’ part, she intended to make it as widely known as she could that after her night of poetry she would be taking some time to herself in Eisande, to seek healing and a respite from the noise and bustle of the City. Her apprentice Gilles would believe it; Melisande would believe it. Even Thelesis herself believed it, although it would only be a short time that she spent in Eisande.

“Those of Eisheth’s line have great healing abilities, and I certainly can’t get any _worse_ at their hands,” she said wryly before stifling a cough.

Simon offered to escort her out of the City and, after some thought, Thelesis acceded.

“I think people will be expecting me to go somewhat better accompanied—oh, don’t look like that, young Eglantine! I meant in terms of numbers, not quality.”

There was a little more planning and banter of that nature between Thelesis, Simon, and Mavros, before Thelesis rose and said that she had to get back to the Palace. “I don’t want anyone missing me, and considering how close we are to my recital, they’re often looking for me.”

Mavros escorted her out, leaving me alone with Simon.

“We’re really doing this,” he said.

“Yes. We are.”

“It’s madness.” He flashed a smile. “I’m rather looking forward to it.”

“I’m glad to hear that, because I don’t think we can turn back from here.” I thought of Emile’s messenger, on his way to the L’Envers estate; of the Prince, aware of our intentions; even of Thelesis, although I couldn’t fathom any reason that she would let slip our plans. There were too many variables now that we couldn’t control. Either this would work, or it would fail.

* * *

When Amarante found out that Thelesis was to join us, she insisted upon going with her to Marsilikos.

“It’s not that I don’t enjoy prolonged horse-riding, but Thelesis will be better served by having more than one companion. Melisande will be expecting as much, and will certainly be suspicious of Thelesis’ sole companion being one random Eglantine adept.”

“They might have met at any of her readings. The young man enthralled by the brilliant poet, vowed to accompany her on her travels...”

“Even so, it’s not a risk I want to run.”

I was chary of riding to Lombelon with only Maslin and Mavros for company aside from the Prince, but I’d been taking risks all the way through this endeavor. It wasn’t that I thought that anything would go awry with them, rather that if Melisande caught wind of what was happening... well. It would be very easy for one scion of House Courcel to go missing unnoticed, especially when I was in a foreign land. To have only two people I trusted besides the Prince would not be enough to keep me safe.

There was no turning back now, though.


	7. Chapter 7

The morning of Thelesis’ recital dawned mostly fair, with a brisk breeze that made me shiver as I ventured out for breakfast. I was going to miss this while we were traveling; the early morning sounds of the City waking up, people calling greetings to each other, the smell of fresh food. I knew that fresh food would be hard to come by on the ship, and that we would have to take what opportunities we could while circling back around the City from Lombelon to Marsilikos.

Still, it would be worth it in the end.

I thought on the plan as I purchased breakfast and found a sunny corner to sit in to eat. In essence, we meant to send Melisande mad, make it clear that she was unfit to sit the throne even as regent, and deprive her of her only child. It was a ghastly idea, if we had been doing it to anyone else. It seemed to me that in this instance it was like approaching a venomous snake to cut off its head.

I finished my breakfast and then went back to my lodgings to pack. I was keeping with me only the bare necessities. Most of my belongings were going back into my trunk and would be stowed in the carriage that Thelesis and her companions would travel in. If the Prince, Mavros, and Maslin were bringing anything other than clothing, they would do the same.

One of Maslin’s men came from the Palace mid-morning to collect it, acting as though nothing was strange about Thelesis taking the belongings of a random Cruithne lass with her to Eisande. Another person involved, however slightly, in our plans. Another person who might speak, willingly or unwillingly, to Melisande.

My notes, I burnt in the fireplace, poking them until the ashes crumbled.

I kept thinking of the brief meeting with the Prince. He had seemed so cold, as though part of him had never left Daršanga, but remained yet enclosed in the chill walls of the zenana. Still, it was evident that Mavros and Maslin would defend him fiercely, and he cared deeply for Thelesis. It made me wonder if he had fallen in love with her, but it seemed more likely that he had made of her a kind of motherly figure. After all, she had been exiled to Alba in her youth, and Phèdre, his would-be foster-mother, was in exile there now.

He might yet unbend. That was our great hope for him, those of us who had discussed it. He might yet recover from the poison his mother had poured into his ear in the guise of solicitude and caring.

All my intentions I had set out with had been turned on their head. It was no longer a matter of simply trying to seduce him with an eye to somehow regaining the throne for my mother. Now it was a matter of saving him from himself—and of course his mother.

Lineage; lineage. It all kept coming back to that.

There was little for me to do that day once I had packed, save waiting for the evening. Elodie had finished my dress and, despite her complaints that she had had so little time to do so, it was lovely. The deep green fabric with gold adornments worked beautifully; it reminded me of the Jasmine adepts’ style of dress. I had bought a golden hair ornament to decorate my now chestnut hair. I had no intention of hiding it under a caul any more.

I slipped the necklace that Charlotte had made for me over my head. The triquetra sat nicely just above the place where the dress’s neckline dipped to show a little of my cleavage.

The tattoo itself was well healed. D’Angelines make excellent healing balms. At the very least it looked as though it had been there for some time, rather than being done in haste a mere five days earlier.

We were so very close to our goal now, and it made the hours pass all the slower. I had kept back one book from my packing, but the words swam on the page, and in the end I curled up on the bed, falling into a fitful sleep.

* * *

“Sidonie!” Amarante’s tone was sharp and concerned, as though she had called me more than once. “Naamah’s sake, wake up!”

The room was dim, the day’s light almost gone. I blinked my way awake. “What—”

“We’ve half an hour to get you ready. You’ve been asleep all afternoon.”

“Oh.” I rolled off the bed, smoothing the sheets back into place. “I don’t know how I managed that.”

“Be grateful of it; it might be the best sleep that you get in some time.” Amarante moved swiftly around me, undressing me without her usual motive. “Where’s your comb? Have you been tossing and turning all afternoon? Your hair’s a rat’s nest.” Her own hair was beautifully coiffed. “At least nobody’s going to mistake you for royalty, looking like you just crawled out of bed.”

“I _did_ just crawl out of bed.” I raised my arms so that Amarante could slip the dress on over my head.

“Even so...”

We achieved a level of presentation that suited both of us in the end; I’d had no doubt that we would. I had written a note bidding Charlotte the gemcutter farewell and many thanks for the use of her room, and left it on the desk.

Then I left my little room behind me.

Amarante noticed how quiet I was as we rode in the carriage toward the Palace. “What troubles you, my Princess?”

“I know I’ve only been here a short while,” I said slowly. “But I’ll miss the freedom of living alone.”

“You can always come back once—once everything is all over.”

“But I won’t be Sidonie of Eisande. I’ll be Sidonie mab—Sidonie de la Courcel. Dauphine. Princess. Heir.” I shifted along the seat to lean my head on her shoulder. “I don’t mind rescuing Mother’s throne for her, but nobody’s ever _asked_ me if I mind having the Queen of Terre d’Ange as my mother, and the throne my own ultimate destiny.”

“I doubt anyone _asked_ Prince Imriel whether he minded having one of the biggest traitors to the realm as his mother, either,” Amarante said mildly.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “I suppose not.”

We kept talking as the carriage made its slow journey to the Palace, and it calmed my nerves somewhat.

They flared up again when we arrived at the Palace, though.

My childhood home.

Melisande’s den of snakes.

The poetry recital was in the Hall of Words. People sat or stood, nibbling tid-bits or drinking wine. I moved as close to the front as I dared, suddenly very conscious that my disguise might not stand up to deep scrutiny, depending on whose eyes sought me out.

Lianne and Noémie met me as promised, exclaiming over my dress and giving Simon curious looks. Amarante they knew, of course.

“What do you think her new poem will be about?” Lianne asked of us. “I’ve heard rumors that it’s quite... _subversive_.”

“Your hair looks so lovely like that, Sidonie!” Noémie said.

“We’ll have to wait and see, Lianne,” Amarante said, while I thanked Noémie for the compliment.

“Where did you get that lovely pendant? It’s just like your tattoo!”

I wondered if Noémie had any notion of conversation beyond observations on people’s attire and adornments. “The gemcutter I’m lodging with, Charlotte Bellerose.”

Both of them started drilling Simon about his personal details, then, and I noticed that when he said he was from Eglantine House both of them pursed their lips momentarily. Had the Night Court really fallen so far in people’s estimation? I couldn’t imagine it, even though I’d heard the occasional disparaging remark about it.

But then the proceedings began in earnest, and I forgot everything but the recital.

Melisande spoke first, welcoming us simply to the night’s entertainment. She looked weary, so far as I could tell, and I wondered whether the Prince’s intention to go away to Lombelon had been taking a toll on her. Well, and so. If it did, then surely she would break further when he vanished. I didn’t have it in my heart to feel particularly sorry for her.

Gilles Lamiz spoke next, declaiming a part of his poetry regarding Joscelin’s ventures as a Cassiline, the epic that had drawn so many young men to join the Cassiline Brotherhood. Even not having heard the original version I could tell that it had been deeply censored; if not from the choppiness of the verse, then from Melisande’s cool gaze as she stood in the wings. It was the gaze of someone waiting for the headman’s axe to fall if aught went awry.

There were a number of shorter presentations by up and coming young poets. Some of them were members of Eglantine House; Simon spoke of them quietly to me as each took the stage, telling me of friendships and rivalries. It only struck me then just how much he was leaving behind to travel to Alba with us.

“I wouldn’t go if I didn’t want to,” he said when I mentioned it. “If it means that my friends can speak out without fear of censorship or worse, then I’d travel wherever was needful.”

Gilles resumed the stage after six other poets, and recited a poem lauding the beauty of Terre d’Ange before welcoming Thelesis to the stage.

She looked so fragile, but her voice rang out strongly, without a hint of a cough.

Her new poem was about how beauty could be fleeting, how perfection could fade, and I gradually became aware that she was not only responding to Gilles’ poem, but honoring the Night Court in her own way. The Night Court and the fact that all beauty must fade, even that which has been remarked on as particularly striking. Then her words moved on to the protectors and stalwart shields of the realm, and Gilles’ words mingled with hers.

I could read the undercurrent: she was speaking of Phèdre and Joscelin, of my mother and father, and of Melisande’s inevitable downfall.

Melisande knew it.

Her eyebrows drew down, dark angry lines, and she took a step forward, one hand lifting as if to pull Thelesis from the stage. Someone in the wings spoke to her, drawing her back, and she lowered her hand, although her face remained dark.

Thelesis and Gilles concluded their recital to thundering applause, and Thelesis had to hold her hands up for quiet.

“There is one more poem I would speak for you this evening. I imagine you all know it already.”

And she recited The Exile’s Lament.

Not a person stirred; not even the smallest of movements. The Hall of Words was utterly silent. Each of her simple lines of verse rang out clearly. I could imagine her in Alba, living there alone with her thoughts, setting them to paper as sweet, heartbreaking poetry.

Thelesis’ voice cracked on the final word, “home”, and Gilles hastened to help her from the stage even as the audience burst out in applause. Simon left my side, hurrying through the crowd.

Melisande came forward, and the crowd fell silent.

“Our Royal Poet is still unwell, but we have been fortunate enough to experience her genius this night. She intends to travel to Eisande for healing.” Her gaze travelled across the crowd. For a moment I thought her eyes rested on me, lingering, but she moved on without any apparent suspicion. “For any of you seeking to replace her, the strictures on what may be spoken of in verse still apply.”

She left the stage abruptly, before anyone could begin to respond. Small bubbles of conversation burst out across the room. I couldn’t bear it, this sharp, threatening ending to the evening. I left the room without waiting for either Mavros or Maslin.

Maslin was the one who caught up with me.

“Mavros is on his way with the Prince. He told the regent—” his lip curled “—that the Prince was greatly saddened by Thelesis’ recital and he wants to leave immediately.”

“We were going to wait until tomorrow morning!” I protested. “Surely she’ll suspect something.”

“She might, but I don’t think she will.” His gaze was calm. “Sidonie, we have to go _now_.”

I looked around and realized that I had blundered into the Hall of Portraits. A long line of de la Courcel faces looked down on me, but one was missing.

My mother.

I saw the portrait; I saw it cast aside in a corner, the frame broken, the canvas slashed. Brutal, so brutal. As would my own fate be, if I were caught.

“Let’s go,” I agreed, allowing Maslin to take my arm.

I had to leave the City separately to the others. Melisande would want to remain with her son until the last possible moment. They were traveling by carriage; I had my own horse to ride, thanks to Emile.

I waited in darkness as close as I dared to the gate, a cloak wrapped around me, both for warmth and to hide my features, in case anyone recognized me as the woman who had spent time talking to both Mavros and Maslin the last few days. My horse shifted and snorted under me, and I leaned forward to scratch between her ears.

Finally, finally, the carriage began to move, the lanterns hung from fore and rear swaying, Mavros in the driver’s seat, Maslin inside with the Prince. How exactly Maslin had persuaded Melisande to let the Prince go without a large escort was anyone’s guess; mayhap he had a tongue as silver as his hair.

I waited until Melisande walked away at last, surrounded by her own retinue, and then urged my horse forward, through the gate, following the carriage. We had no lantern; I had to trust to her sure feet and the moonlight to find the way. If anyone saw me following the carriage, as someone was bound to if I had carried a light, the alarm would be raised immediately.

Nobody saw me.

I sat up straight, realizing I had unconsciously been crouched over my horse’s neck for fear of being seen. She took it as a sign to go faster, and I let her do so, reckoning that she knew best when it came to her limitations in terms of seeing in the dark.

Catching up with the carriage was easy. I was grateful of the light its lanterns shed.

“All well, Princess?” Mavros enquired, turning his head to look at me.

“All well, cousin,” I said, and he laughed.

“On to Lombelon, then.”

“On to Lombelon.” I shifted in the saddle, settling myself for the journey.

* * *

We spent enough time in Lombelon for Maslin to speak to a few people, exhorting them not to say where we were going. Not that they knew where we were truly bound. We were giving them the same story as Thelesis’; a journey to Eisande, to partake of healing and fresh sea air in Marsilikos.

I could see the pride in Maslin’s face as he showed us around the estate, which was thriving even with the first bites of winter on its way. The stored apples, the cider house, the numerous other small projects that came together as a whole to run what was a prosperous place. It made me think of the outlying crofts of Bryn Gorrydum, and made me homesick. It was strange to feel so, when I _was_ home, in a way.

The Prince reveled in memories of his first visit to Lombelon, although I couldn’t quite see the appeal of the youthful rivalry he’d had at the outset with Maslin before laboring together had endeared Maslin to him.

“I don’t imagine you _would_ understand,” he said to me when I said as much. “Forgive me for saying so, but I don’t think you’ve had to _work_ to make people like you.”

It was a very backhanded compliment, and I had to bite my tongue rather than biting his head off over it. Maslin intervened by offering us both perry brandy to try, and the pleasantly dizzying effect it had on us both blunted the words the Prince had used.

It was interesting, though, that he thought people liked me so readily. Even as a child people had called me cool and aloof. The Cruithne people had reservations about my heritage just as the people of Terre d’Ange had, although they had taken to Alais immediately.

The Prince had a bigger disadvantage than I did in that arena, though: his mother.

We warmed up to each other slowly, those few days at Lombelon. He and Maslin and Mavros had a kind of circle between them, and I _did_ have to work to fit into it. Of course Mavros was perfectly happy to welcome me in, but Maslin was more reticent, and the Prince was like a closed door on the matter.

Still, he spoke to me of those things that were safe. His childhood, goat-herding at the Temple of Elua. How he’d met Mavros and his siblings Roshana and Baptiste, all four of them going through a turbulent adolescence at almost the same time and driving the rest of the Shahrizai family quite wild in the process. Working at Lombelon with Maslin in the spring. He avoided mentioning Phèdre and Joscelin and, in turn, so did I.

I told him instead of how I had been raised as royalty from birth, the opposite of his own experience. How I’d then spent my own adolescent years in Alba, in my own turn learning to work with the people and the land. The similarities and differences between Terre d’Ange and Alba. (He did not offer to reciprocate with the similarities and differences between Terre d’Ange and Drujan.) How Alais and I had studied with the _ollamh_ Firdha, and Alais doubtless still was.

“I didn’t have the same affinity for magic as she did.”

“Interesting,” the Prince said. “Do you think mayhap your D’Angeline heritage outweighs your Alban heritage in that respect?”

“I suppose.”

“We’re all subject to our heritage,” he said. We were sitting in a courtyard at Lombelon, watching Maslin and one of his cousins spar. “Aren’t we?”

“It always comes back to that,” I agreed. “Heritage and the lines of inheritance.”

“Who’s inheriting what?” Mavros asked cheerfully, dropping onto the bench between us and slinging an arm around each of our necks. “Am I inheriting old family grudges?”

“You already have them,” the Prince and I said in unison, exchanging a startled glance before sharing a smile at our unthinking accord.

It was then that I knew that, even if my original plan to simply seduce him away from the throne was no more, I could quite possibly be friends with him.


	8. Chapter 8

We left Lombelon after four days, reckoning that to be sufficient time to establish our presence there so that the people would not find it suspicious that we had come and gone so quickly.

I daresay that the fleetest of couriers might have made it from Lombelon to Marsilikos in a day, had they fresh horses to change to along the way and it was a most pressing matter. We didn’t need to journey nearly as fast; indeed, if we did, it would draw more attention than if we took our time.

Emile had given us suggestions of villages to spend our nights in where the people would be discreet. Indeed, the inns where we stayed were almost entirely tended by Tsingani. It comforted me that at the very least if word of our travels spread it would be through the Tsingani kumpanias, and not to more suspicious ears.

Word spread _to_ them, as well.

It was how I found out that our messenger had reached my uncle Barquiel and, although he was dubious about the whole plan, he was beginning to pull together troops to take the City.

It was how I found out that Thelesis had departed the City safely the day after her recital, Simon and Amarante accompanying her, leaving Gilles as her replacement while she was gone.

And, when we were down to the final day’s travel to Marsilikos, it was how I found out that Melisande was beginning to have concerns about her son’s true destination.

Someone had said a wrong word somewhere, or mayhap she’d drawn her own conclusions, but she was suspicious, and it was beginning to make cracks in the façade of her smooth political face.

We were at a small inn in Eisande, breaking our fast, when Emile’s messenger found us.

“We’d better make for Marsilikos as soon as possible so that Imriel can send a messenger back to her,” Mavros said, looking disgusted. “We’re so close to the end!”

“He could write three or four messages,” I suggested. “Leave them with Roxanne, to send back one at a time. It won’t work if Melisande demands to see him personally, but—”

Mavros stilled the rest of my sentence with a smacking kiss on the mouth. “Clever girl,” he proclaimed. “Imri, get writing. Maslin, pack our bags. Sidonie, I’ve a mind to congratulate you properly for that notion.”

I had no doubt what he meant. “As delightful as that offer is, Lord Shahrizai,” I said dryly, “we have to be on the road as soon as possible.

“I can make it quick.”

“And lose the pleasure?”

“There’s no reason you can’t have both. A swift, furtive tumble in the hay—”

“Shut up, Mavros,” the Prince said. “I’m trying to write a letter to my loving mother. Your lechery isn’t helping.”

“Besides,” I added, “speaking of hay, you smell of horse.”

Mavros took the laughter at his expense exceedingly well, but I noticed he did sniff discreetly at the cuffs and collar of his shirt.

Those last miles to Marsilikos, I rode with my hands clenched around my horse’s reins. It was no great flight across Skaldia, as Phèdre and Joscelin had undertaken; it was no dark journey into and out of Drujan, as the Prince had taken. It wasn’t even the ride to the City that my mother had taken through an army, held at bay only by her bravery.

I had no doubt, though, that if we were found out, the result would still be horrific.

I sighed with relief when I first sighted Marsilikos’ golden dome on the horizon. The sound of gulls came to me, carried by a stray wind, and a scent of brine that was light enough to be pleasing. Bracing sea air.

We reached the city early in the afternoon. Maslin rode ahead of us to speak to Roxanne de Mereliot. Her people would be less suspicious of him than of either a Shahrizai man or a Cruithne woman coming out of nowhere. My hair was beginning to fade back to its natural color, but enough of the brown remained that, combined with my eyes, it would make people wonder.

While Maslin was gone we rode down to the docks. Several ships rode the waves, anchored in place, bound to Terre d’Ange. It would be unusual for one of them to leave.

We idled the time away talking. I was struck anew by the depth of the bond between Mavros and the Prince. It seemed that no matter what disdain the Prince held for his Shahrizai family, Mavros was excluded from it.

“That’s because nobody told him when he was growing up that he was supposed to hate me,” Mavros said, working a comb through the Prince’s hair. They had both been wearing their hair either loose or caught back simply, rather than in the very obvious Shahrizai braids. Even so, they both had very long, very fine hair, prone to attracting the breeze. “Or Roshana and Baptiste.”

“I do miss them,” the Prince murmured.

“Enough to go back?” Mavros’ hands stilled in the Prince’s hair. “To return to your mother?”

“ _No_.”

Well, and so; it seemed that matter was thoroughly settled in one small word.

Mavros, finished with the Prince’s hair, beckoned me over. I changed places with the Prince, who had been sitting on a bench between Mavros’ knees as Mavros sat higher up on a table. The comb felt very good working through my hair, even though it snagged on more than a few knots. _Now_ it was a rat’s nest, as Amarante had said the night we left the City.

That was how we were sitting when Amarante herself approached, accompanied by Maslin.

“You _are_ getting along well now, aren’t you?” was her greeting to me.

“Tolerably,” I said, swatting Mavros when he tried to kiss me on the cheek. “Get off, you wretched man.”

“Come on, all of you. Roxanne knows you’re here, but she won’t let you sail until the morrow. In the meantime, you’re to join her for dinner.” Amarante looked at us and shook her head. “You’d best come back to the inn first. You’re all disgraceful.”

“Is Thelesis there?” the Prince asked, at the same time as Mavros asked, “Is Simon there?”

“They’re both there. As are rooms for you all, and _baths_.”

“I think she’s trying to tell us something, Imri,” Mavros said, swinging down off the table. “Let’s go, then.” Maslin rolled his eyes and reassumed his place on the carriage driver’s seat; the horses had been waiting patiently for us.

* * *

The inn where we were staying was called the Roaming Priestess, adjacent to the local temple of Naamah. Thelesis and Amarante were sharing a room and it was there that Amarante took me to bathe. I immersed myself in the hot water with great relief. The days of traveling had indeed left me somewhat the worse for wear in the cleanliness department.

Thelesis sat on the edge of her bed and we talked while Amarante washed my hair. Her voice was softer when she wasn’t reciting her poetry, as though some divine force buoyed it up when she was sharing her soul with the world.

“You’ve set yourself a difficult task, Sidonie. Imriel’s not easy to _like_ at times, let alone care for as deeply as I think you hope to.” Her mouth quirked. “But then, you’ve always been stronger than people take you for—and more stubborn.”

“Have I?” I wasn’t sure.

“Certainly when you were a child. I think you would have left the nursery as soon as you could walk and started exploring the Palace if you hadn’t been stopped.” I felt rather than heard Amarante stifling laughter. “The only person more wilful than you was your sister.”

“Alais. I can see that of her.” I thought of her sitting in my open trunk, her face tearstained. I looked forward to seeing her in person. I wondered what she would make of her royal cousin. For that matter I wondered what all of them would think. Phèdre and Joscelin had supported the idea of bringing him to Alba, Joscelin more reticently than Phèdre. My mother had misliked the idea at first but warmed to it when my father had suggested that it would open the way to strike against Melisande.

I was grateful to have the trunk with my possessions returned to me, and made a point of wearing my blue silk dress to dine with the Lady of Marsilikos. I felt the eyes of our whole party on me as we made our way to the Dome of the Lady. Thelesis seemed to be storing up my appearance for some poem or other, but the others one and all were looking for rather more intimate reasons. Excluding Simon, who only had eyes for Mavros; I wasn’t sure whether they were both besotted by the newness of their relationship, or whether there was somewhat else beneath it.

The Prince was more subtle in his regard, but I saw him looking.

Roxanne de Mereliot was most welcoming, despite the fact that she had been reticent about aiding us in our quest. She would have offered us rooms, except that it was safer for us to go as unnoticed as possible.

“It’s more than enough that you’ve arranged passage on a ship for us, Lady,” I told her.

“You’ll sail in the morning.” She wrung her hands. “I do wish you’d reconsider, Sidonie. Your mother will be beyond angry with me if this mad plan of yours fails.”

“If it fails, it won’t be your doing,” I said firmly. “Tell me what you’ve arranged, please?”

“It’s not a greatship or anything particularly large, since it only needed to accommodate a couple of passengers.” Her deep grey eyes sparkled with amusement. “I didn’t know until the messenger arrived to tell me you were sending Thelesis along as well that ‘a couple’ meant more than two.”

“The Prince and Princess deserve a proper retinue,” Mavros said loftily.

“Well and so; where is it then?” Roxanne retorted, making us all laugh.

“Tell us more.” I couldn’t help but twist my linen napkin between my fingers, fretting at the edges of it.

“She’s the _Ritornelle_ , so named because she was built to dance swiftly over the waves. A messenger-ship, not a cargo ship. The crew are all D’Angeline and loyal to the de la Courcel family, though they won’t of course be flying the Courcel swan. I’m not even sure they’ll fly Elua’s flag. It might be safer not to, depending on what the crew think. They’re led by Captain Paschal Augustin, and he’s a sensible man.”

“It sounds excellent,” I said.

“Better than traveling through Jebe-Barkal in the rainy season,” the Prince said unexpectedly.

I eyed him. “From what Phèdre told me, anything would be.”

He gave me an almost mischievous smile, and it made me smile back at him.

Roxanne cleared her throat. “As you have a long journey ahead of you, I suggest you make the most of the local fare.” She called for our meal to be brought out to us, and soon a feast was spread before us.

We dined on the finest seafood I have ever eaten: fish so fresh and beautifully baked that its flesh fell from the bones; a rich bouillabaisse accompanied by thick slices of soft bread; delicate flaky crab meat drowning in hot butter; and more. I ate until I felt I would have to be rolled back to my room. Judging from the lack of conversation save for frequent requests to pass this platter or that, so did my companions.

A Princess in exile. A King in waiting. The head of the Prince’s personal guard. The Royal Poet. A Priestess of Naamah. An adept of Eglantine House. A scion of House Shahrizai. And, watching over us all, her mouth curved in a smile, the Lady of Marsilikos. I doubted whether a more mixed gathering had ever sat down to dine in the Dome of the Lady.

After we finished the meal with a sweet white wine, we passed a pleasant hour or two listening to Roxanne’s favorite musicians, before returning to the Roaming Priestess for our final night of rest on land. We’d take ship on the morrow, and pray that there was no word from the City, no demand from Melisande to return her son to her, having seen through our plans.

I thought I would surely pass a restless night, but I was so tired from our travels and full of good food that I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

* * *

The morning breeze was brisk enough to wake us all the way up as we made our way to the docks. Mavros complained extravagantly of the chill, shivering exaggeratedly.

“Wait until we’re out at sea,” I said.

“And be glad we’re not rowing,” the Prince added. “I did tell you the story of the Lake of Tears.”

Mavros nodded. “You did.”

It was a tale I knew as well, although from a different teller. For the first time I truly wondered how the Prince would tell his side of all the stories I’d heard from Phèdre and Joscelin. The would be some parts too dark to tell, but the Lake of Tears was one I would like to hear from his point of view.

“You told me as well,” Thelesis put in. “Although I dare say Sidonie might have heard it from Phèdre and Joscelin.”

The Prince seemed to turn in on himself a little, before straightening. I wondered if it was the reminded that I had grown up with them in my life, instead of him. “Then we can pass time on board the ship sharing our stories,” he said.

“And Simon can teach us all how to turn cartwheels,” Mavros said.

The ship had already been provisioned for the journey, and what few possessions we had brought with us were taken aboard. The Lady Roxanne was waiting for us at the edge of the dock, worry plain on her face, in her eyes.

“Be careful,” was all she said, though, before kissing us all on the cheek.

There was no last-moment messenger galloping up on a lathered horse; no call for us to stop in our tracks; no Melisande storming up and demanding that we unhand her son. There was just Roxanne, and us, and the ship.

Captain Augustin beckoned us on board, and we went, obediently following his directions to where we would be out of the way while the sailors prepared for us to launch. Ropes were cast off, the gangplank taken in, and the anchor weighed.

We set sail. The sails billowed white as the wind caught them. The ship creaked beneath our feet, timbers shifting and settling as the waves tugged us away from the dock. Roxanne raised her hand to us, waving farewell.

We were on our way to Alba.


	9. Chapter 9

The journey back to Alba was longer than the journey I had made to Terre d’Ange. Until Hyacinthe could identify us in his sea-mirror to hasten our journey, we were sailing under the speed of the wind, and it was often weak or even against us. The sailors made the best of it they could, even when it turned bitterly cold. We put in at various ports to resupply when needed, but rarely stopped for long. I imagined that Captain Augustin was well known as the messenger-captain of the _Ritornelle_.

We did fly Elua’s lily-and-stars, although I got a sense that some people would rather not have any messages borne to them out of Terre d’Ange, and it saddened me.

Despite the season, the days felt longer than the nights, endless, filled only with the blue-grey sea stretching away from us in all directions. At least at night I could sleep, or share Amarante’s bed and _not_ sleep.

I had anticipated spending the Longest Night on board ship, given that winter had begun. There would be no fête. There certainly wouldn’t be a riotous celebration as with the Day of Misrule back home. I’d tried to explain it to my D’Angeline companions, but all of them—save Simon, who had laughed with delight—had dismissed it as not nearly as majestic as the Longest Night.

The Prince chose to keep a vigil.

He knelt at the bow of the ship, just a figure huddled in a cloak against the biting wind. Amarante went and spoke softly to him, and he just as softly rebuffed her suggestion that he at least move belowdecks.

“We’d best watch over him,” Mavros said, his expression suggesting that he’d rather do anything but. While the food on board ship wasn’t the quality I’d come to experience in Terre d’Ange, even in my short time there, the sailors had arranged a small feast, and we could hear their laughter from where we were standing. Thelesis had already gone belowdecks to bed.

“You take the second watch,” Maslin said, seeing the look on Mavros’ face. “I’ll come and get you.”

“I’ll take the third,” Simon said.

“No,” I said. “I will.”

* * *

I slept as best as I could until Mavros came to get me, and wrapped myself up as warmly before venturing up to the deck. The Prince was unmoving, but his breath formed white plumes in the air. The sky was the pure dark that comes before dawn, and the ice-white stars stood out all the clearer against it.

Mavros had left me with perhaps two hours to watch over the Prince before the sun rose, and I passed them in a vigil of my own. While the Prince’s head was bowed, his thoughts turned inward in contemplation of I knew not what, I looked straight ahead at the invisible horizon.

Out there, somewhere, was my home.

Behind me, somewhere, was my home.

I felt torn; I felt whole. Whatever was happening in Terre d’Ange, at the very least I could hope that Emile’s messenger had made it through to Uncle Barquiel, and that he would do his utmost to ensure that if—no, _when_ —Melisande fell, the throne would be kept safe. Lineage: it always came back to that. It was why I’d been thinking of the Prince as the Prince. Dauphin I could never bring myself to call him, but he was still a Prince of the de la Courcel line on his father’s side, third in succession after me and Alais. He had the eyebrows to prove as much.

Red light spilled slowly across the horizon, turning the sea to a shining mirror, light sparking off the waves. The sky was cloudless; the day would be fair. It betokened a good year, if one believed the superstitions. That was one that Dorelei had taught me, along with a Cruithne belief about the first butterfly of summer telling one’s fortune by its color.

I thanked Elua for bringing us this far in safety, and Naamah for watching over us, and Eisheth for sending us healing.

The Prince lifted his head, coming out of his silent meditation as I softly spoke.

“Good morning, Sun Princess,” he said drowsily, smiling at me as he stood up.

Impulsively I leaned in to give him the kiss of greeting, welcoming him to the lengthening days where the sun would shine out brighter and brighter. His lips were cool, but he kissed me back, and there was warmth from within him in it.

That was the exact moment when I stopped thinking of him as the Prince, and started thinking of him by his name.

“Imriel.” I ducked under his arm, holding him up before he could sag to the deck. “Come on.”

“I’m fine, Sidonie.” He was shivering uncontrollably.

“No, you’re not.”

I walked him across the deck and slowly descended the stairs. While the sailors bedded down in hammocks, there were staterooms towards the fore of the ship. Thelesis had one to herself, while Amarante and I had been sharing one, and Imriel and Mavros another. Simon and Maslin had elected to sleep where the sailors did.

Mavros met me at the foot of the stairs, assessed his cousin’s condition with one quick glance, and fondly called him an idiot, ushering him toward their stateroom. I followed them and, once Mavros had piled blankets atop Imriel until he was thoroughly bundled up, sat on the edge of the bed. Imriel’s hand crept out from under the covers and sought mine; I wrapped my fingers around his and squeezed.

“I’ll just—” Mavros said, backing toward the door.

“Go on,” Imriel and I said in unison, and Mavros fled.

“I haven’t properly told you how grateful I am that you engineered this plan,” Imriel said. His voice was muffled, as Mavros had drawn the blankets right up to his nose. I tugged them down a little to reveal his mouth. “Mad as it has been, I think Phèdre would have liked it.”

“We’ll be able to ask her. I have no intention of not getting to Alba now that we’ve stolen you away from Terre d’Ange.”

“This time I don’t mind being stolen.” His blue eyes were sleepy, his eyelids drooping. “Not by such a lovely captor. My Sun Princess... your hair is like gold, you know. I saw it up on the deck, the sunlight turning it to gold.”

“You’re rambling.” I leaned in to tuck the blankets more firmly around him, and his other hand came up to catch me by the arm, arresting me in place.

“I’m not rambling.”

He might have had another reason for stopping me in my tracks with my face so close to his, but whatever it was, I chose to interpret it as an invitation, and I kissed him again.

This time there was heat in it, not just warmth. My tongue parted his lips, and his tongue met mine with a smooth touch that left me tingling. His grip on my arm tightened until I flinched, and he murmured an apology against my lips. Then we were kissing again, forgoing all the subtleties that Amarante had been teaching me for the sake of attempting to crawl inside one another’s skins.

“Imriel—”

“Sidonie—”

He sat up and pulled me even closer, and I tugged at the blankets, dragging them off him long enough to wriggle into the bed with him. I ended up lying atop him, pressed close to him. He wrapped his arms around me.

“Your feet are freezing,” I informed him.

“So are yours.”

I rested my forehead against his, gazing down into his eyes. “This isn’t how I’d thought this would happen.”

“Really?” He wriggled beneath me; I could feel his arousal hard against my thigh. “You didn’t imagine a dalliance with a former King-in-waiting who happens to be your first cousin twice removed, on board a ship fleeing your birth country for the land where you’ve been exiled for years?”

“ _That_ was a mouthful,” I said as dryly as possible. Really, I wanted to laugh.

“I’ve had time to think about it all.” He sounded pensive, despite our proximity. “It’s a lot to think about.”

I kissed him again, slowly. “We might manage more than a dalliance.”

“Mmmm.” His hands slid down my back, grasping my buttocks, grinding up against me. “Can we at least _begin_ with one?”

That _did_ make me laugh, but out of amusement, not at him. Imriel laughed in return, sensing my intent, and while he sounded a little unsure yet, he at least sounded _happy_.

We kissed for a long time, employing all the things Amarante had taught me and all the things Imriel had learned. We kissed until both of us were warmed through from head to toe. At some point someone opened the stateroom door and as quickly closed it again. Neither of us even looked up, too lost in the heat that we were generating between us.

I moved to straddle his hips and from there worked open the buttons of his shirt one by one, stroking his warm skin as it was slowly revealed. I kissed his lips, the tip of his nose, his cheeks, the hollow of his throat. His hands roamed as far as they could reach, shaping out my hips and waist, pulling my own shirt free of the waistband of my skirt and seeking my bare skin beneath.

“You’re a wonder, Sun Princess,” he murmured, unbuttoning my shirt from the bottom up.

“Is that your name for me now?”

“If you’d seen how you looked outside in the dawn’s light, you’d have no doubt.” He pulled me down into another kiss and finessed his hands inside my shirt at the same time. It wasn’t the slow, sensual unveiling of our bodies that Amarante and I had undertaken our first time together, but it certainly had its own recommendations.

Neither of us could bear to wait a moment longer to press bare skin to bare skin, discarding our shirts to land where they would on the floor. I daresay the gasps we made when we did were audible the length of the ship. The smooth planes of his chest felt so good against my breasts, and judging from his body’s reaction he felt the same.

“This is—” I found myself at a loss for words.

Imriel dispensed with words altogether in favor of moving to where he could reach to suckle my nipples, interspersing long sucks with short, quick licks that left me breathless. When it was almost too much for me to bear I ground down against him, letting him feel the heat at my center, and he groaned, arching up in return.

Both of us were wearing simple linen breeches; it was easier for me than a dress on board ship. I daresay nobody has ever torn the lacings free as fast as we did that morning, the sun slanting in through the porthole to illuminate our bodies, laid completely bare to each other now. We stood by the bed a pace apart, drinking in the sight of one another.

He had scars that crossed the porcelain perfection of his skin. One or two looked like the results of overly exuberant swordplay or simple boyish mishaps. One of them, though, was clearly a faded brand. I touched it with a fingertip and he shivered.

“I’ll tell you one day. Not now.”

“Not now,” I agreed.

He noticed the one considerable scar that I had on my calf and knelt to examine it. “What made this?”

I swallowed back tears. “Alais—my sister—had a favorite hunting dog. The dog was gored by a boar. I tried to stitch her up. She bit me.”

“Did you save her?” Imriel asked, looking up at me.

“Yes. In the end.” I smiled, remembering how delighted Alais had been the first time that Celeste had walked again. “I needed stitches of my own, though.”

“I can imagine.” Imriel bent his head right down, pressing his lips to the scar, and then straightened up. His head was level with my hips when he did so. “While I’m down here…” His hands traced slow lines up my calves and thighs, urging my legs apart.

Where Amarante performing the _languisement_ on me had made me feel like I would melt from the pleasure, Imriel made me feel as though I would burst into flame. His tongue darted, knowing and sure, between my folds, seeking Naamah’s Pearl and working it with a will. He gripped my hips to keep me from falling; Elua knows I needed the support!

I had thought once that if I had met Mavros Shahrizai first on entering the City, instead of Amarante of Namarre, my introduction to the physical side of loving would have been sharper than Amarante’s way.

What Imriel was doing now was what I had imagined and more; he had an instinct for just how rough he could be, and I reveled in it.

He teased me close to the edge and then backed off more than once, before pushing me to succumb. I shivered apart under his lips and tongue, and only his hands on my hips kept me from collapsing.

Imriel eased me down onto the bed and wiped his hand gracelessly across his lips; I could see the wetness that I had left there.

“A moment to catch your breath, my lady?” His tone was at once solicitous and amused.

“ _A_ moment,” I said, counting silently to five before catching him and reeling him in to stand between my knees. I didn’t catch him by the hips, either. He gasped at my effrontery, and then again when I bent my head to run my tongue around the crown of his phallus, licking at the salty fluid there.

“Sidonie!”

“Hush. Let me concentrate.”

He didn’t know that I truly did need to concentrate. This wasn’t something that could be readily taught by theory alone, nor even with the aid of a Showing. But the clean hot smell of his body drew me to take him deeper into my mouth, feeling the heavy heat of him pressing my tongue down. I ran my tongue around his crown again and felt his hands settle on my shoulders, seeking his own support and balance.

I took him in as deeply as I dared, a half-inch at a time, feeling him stretch my lips and press against the roof of my mouth. I pinned him there to stroke the underside of his phallus with my tongue, savoring the low moans that it elicited from him. I had my hand wrapped around his base and still my lips only just met my fingers when I had taken him in as far as I could stand.

And then I let him slip most of the way free before sucking him in again, and again, and again.

I could feel his climax approaching in the way that his length grew even more taut between my lips, and his breath grew erratic and gasping. I tormented him as long as I could, as best as I could, until his thumbs dug into my shoulders and he pushed me back.

“Not this time, Sidonie… I want to be inside you.”

I pulled him down onto the bed, moving once more to straddle his hips. I had a good idea of what I was about, and I wanted to be in control, at least to begin with.

I moved so that the head of his phallus just pressed against my entrance. “Is this what you want?”

“Yes!” he gasped raggedly.

I moved my knees in closer, pinning him in place, and eased down just a little further, letting him slide along my slick heat, brushing my Pearl of Naamah. He made an almost anguished noise and reached to pull me down, but I stalled his hands, interlacing our fingers. I shifted again so that he was just barely inside me.

We balanced on that point for a long moment, that point of no return, that point where something new, be it dalliance or desire, a single liaison or a longer love-affair, would begin. His eyes were wide, their deep blue irises almost swallowed up by the black pupils.

Then I took him into me, and everything changed.

He slipped into me as easily as if he’d done it a hundred times before. Our bodies fit together as though they had always known each other. The sensation of being so filled up was new and exciting, and yet I also felt as if we had done this time and again.

Our eyes met, and held each other’s wondering gaze; our breathing slowed and synchronized, hanging in that one perfect first moment of connection.

“Sidonie—”

“ _Imriel_.” I leaned down to kiss him. His left hand tangled in my hair, while his right hand came up to cup my breast. I couldn’t keep my head straight through the rush of combined sensations, and had to sit upright again, focusing solely on where we were joined, learning how best to move to please us both. “Imri...”

He moved in me, rising to meet me every time I rode down against him, cresting and falling like the ship itself as it rode the swells of the waves.

I had expected a leisurely, long lovemaking, after my experiences with Amarante and the Jasmine adepts’ Showing, but Imriel’s breathing quickened abruptly and he let out a low cry, fingertips digging into my hips as he spent himself within me. His eyes fell closed, his lashes printing dark half-circles against his pale skin.

It was surprising, but also rather flattering that he’d lost control so quickly. I eased myself off him, feeling an odd ache of loss as he slipped out of me, and lay beside him, one hand on his chest, feeling his rapidly beating heart.

“That was unexpected,” Imriel said once his breathing had gone back to normal.

“What was? Making love to your cousin who happens to also be the heir to the throne of your homeland, despite having been in exile in another country entirely for several years, while fleeing said homeland to said other country?” I smiled at him.

He laughed, flushing a little. “I was actually thinking of... well. I don’t usually spend so quickly.”

I kissed him as thoroughly as I could manage. “We’ll just have to make sure you last longer next time.”

“I think I can manage that.”

The recovery time for young men is not long, and it may be that Elua’s Children, who have ever been blessed in the physical realm in so many other ways, are also blessed with stamina. Certainly Imriel recovered quickly, and while he was doing so made certain that I remained thoroughly aroused with a number of caresses. He tested me with small bites along my clavicle and pinches to my nipples, seeing how much of that sharper pleasure I could take.

I think it surprised us both just how responsive I was.

He knelt above me, one hand between my legs, tormenting me with a touch so slick from our combined juices that I whimpered and writhed at the lack of friction. With his other hand he stroked his phallus, and I thrilled at the sight of him pleasuring himself.

When he at last slid into me again, it was as though some sweet warm oil covered his manhood, and he moved in me with ease. I reached to grasp his buttocks and he trapped my wrists together with one hand, pinning them above my head. I whimpered again at that, and his responding laugh was low and insinuating.

“This time, Sun Princess, we see how long _you_ can last.”

It wasn’t long; it wasn’t long at all. His hand tight on my wrists; his fingers working the hard peaks of my nipples, sending pleasure-shocks down my body; the way he moved in me, gradually picking up the pace, responding to the way I reacted to him.

When I climaxed he caught my cries with his mouth on mine.

After that he was rougher again, both hands gripping my wrists, body pressed against mine, driving into me over and over. I wrapped my legs around him, ankles crossing behind his thighs, and gasped benedictions to Elua, to Naamah, to Imriel himself. I knew that this was only a taste of what we could do together, and I knew that he knew as well, looking into the dark blue pools of his eyes.

This time we peaked together, desire crashing over us in waves, and I bit his shoulder to try and silence myself, while he didn’t even attempt to stop the cry that came from deep in his throat.

He released my wrists and I promptly wound my arms around his neck and kissed him fiercely. Somewhere in it one of us started laughing, setting the other off; I hardly knew which.

“I think the whole ship knows we’ve thoroughly settled the difference between our respective branches of the family,” I said when I could manage words properly.

Imriel laughed. “If only all political decisions were resolved so readily.”

“It would certainly make Parliament more interesting.”

We lay together, recovering, for a long while, exchanging kisses and love-talk.

Mavros knocked on the door after a half-hour or so, having apparently judged it safe to enter from the silence, although I was reasonably certain that he wouldn’t have minded coming in sooner.

“If you’re quite finished,” he greeted us, “there’s something you should see on deck.”

Imriel disentangled himself from the blankets and reached for his clothes; I wound one of the blankets around myself, pulling my breeches on underneath it before rising to locate my shirt. Mavros courteously turned to face the wall so that I could finish dressing.

“You’ll both need boots on. It’s still cold up there, although you _have_ used up most of the morning. The sun is quite high in the sky.”

“It was a clear morning, this morning,” I said.

“A good sign for the coming months.” Mavros handed me a pair of his own boots. “Those should do for the time being.”

They were too big for me, and flopped around my ankles, but if we were just going abovedecks, they would be all right. I looked at Imriel, who not only had dressed with speed but also managed to make his hair presentable, sighed, and twisted my own hair into a lover’s-haste knot at the nape of my neck.

We followed Mavros up onto the deck. The others were already there: Thelesis, huddled in her cloak against the cold; Amarante, her arms around Thelesis, keeping her warm; Simon, perched in a bit of the rigging like one of the sailors; and Maslin, looking solemn as he gazed over the ship’s bow.

“What is it?” Imriel asked, but I already knew.

“Land,” I said. “It’s land.”

Mavros nodded to Simon as he pointed unerringly from the rigging to a distant green smudge on the horizon. “He spotted it. Eyes as good as a sailor’s,” he said. “He's not bad with ropes, either.”

Even after my morning with Imriel, Mavros could still make me blush.

We moved up to join the others. Alba was still quite distant, but we were making good time, and once we were close enough Hyacinthe would be able to see us in his sea-mirror and alert my family.

Hyacinthe. Sibeal. Grandmother Necthana. Breidaia and Dorelei and all my cousins.

Phèdre and Joscelin.

My parents.

My heart felt so full with missing them, with knowing I’d see them soon. I drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment, then let it go, turning to Imriel.

“That’s home,” I said.

Imriel reached out and linked his fingers with mine. Our eyes met, and I saw mirrored in his gaze the emotions and feelings that had been growing in my own mind.

“I’m not sure Alba _is_ home,” he said slowly. “Or Terre d’Ange. I think home is wherever our hearts meet and make us feel safe, and where the people we choose to call family live.”

There was nothing that I could say to that, other than to seal our lips together in another long, slow kiss.

It seemed my plan had worked in the end. Or had it? Had I seduced him, or had he seduced me?

I rather thought it was both.


End file.
